Dry Zone Diary Entry

Dryness is water-made

that’s the hydraulic gist

of our story,

painted in dark clouds breaking sky

and yet unbroken

even as it commerces with hard saved water

that is the ‘all’ of life

waiting to fly

in the abiding wait and see

of our centuries

of the made-for-meditation

motion and stillness

the bird in mid-flight

the day’s end tarrying

where water meets tree

and tree touched by sky.

*Inspired by the photography of Hiranya Malwatta

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Preferences

On days like that wet July in ’92

when defeat rained helplessness

after a vote count

of a mere student election;

on days when truth like sunshine

embarks from the clearest eyes of friends

whose honestly

it is said

pours from bloodied wounds,

in hesitant approaches,

they come,

words

          so easily

          so articulate

          so logically thrust

like daggers,

and people wonder why

I choose

To shut heart-window

Now and then.

Ithaca

October 1995

[from the collection 'Epistles: 1984-1996]

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Ode to Coconut

Coconut is everything

as in the classic definition of kalpa-vrksha

takes little and gives all.

coconut is crop, plantation

sambol and mallum-mix

made for sweets and thickness

it is dust-sweeper and chalice

fuel and rope,

decorator and denote of the auspicious

intoxicant and unguent

house-maker and wicket for village cricket

a child’s play horse at times

patterner of landscapes

economy holder

but this wet Tuesday morning

it was a lined triangle

in the reverse V

of a Kawda’s tail

as beautiful and rich

no less eloquent or giving.

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Reflections on a lost election

This good morning in late July

raining hard

and the moving hills

treading gently on my heart,

reflecting on a lost election,

brings to mind the other victories

too shy to enter the warmth of our world:

waiting to be born,

still-born now, sometimes aborted,

always malnourished,

always, always poor.

I think of how the earth yawned

as we passed by cursing bitterly

the rain, the puddles, the mud.

But last night I stopped

and let the earth turn

in its immemorial rotation

for we have had to measure victory

not by how far we have come

but the reluctant tears that swell in vacant eyes,

the amount of ground retain,

the few square inches for laughter

the few cubic inches in our hearts

for love.

Hantane

July 1992

[from the collection 'Epistles: 1984-1996]

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View from Hantane

Looking down from Hantane

night and Kandy

full of candles in silence

and the time carved mood rode

on across our skies

no pity for the collective dead

and scattered flesh on the roadside.

But our hands have been too full

of blood and entrails

to permit mourning.

No time for sadness,

we have no time for love.

Only anger,

Riding along our veins,

Aching blood

of having been born

in the sixties and early seventies.

We have had to watch the slow ceremony

of charred bodies flowing down history,

marking time.

But there were eyes that once gazed on Hantane,

eyes that saw beauty and brutality;

shining eyes that had captured

the sparks of revolt,

hearts that crept into her shades

and were swept by her breeze

youth that did know love

and injustice

and mothers and others who loved

these children.

Hantane, September 1989

[From the collection ‘Epistles: 1984-1996’]

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Kanthi

Someday,

years from now

you will put your head out

          of a moving bus

and call out my name.

And I will look across the street

and weep all the tears

I’ve saved for your sorrow.

[From the collection 'Epistles: 1984-1996]


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