While you were gone….

While you were gone we stuck flowers in our hair and filled socks with sand — FB post by Kalani Kumarasinghe

Socks with sand and balloons with water

flowers in hair and shadows from petrified rocks

ashes that will fight to differentiate 

and dust that dances, sings and settles down

Laughter filtered from overnight rain

frowns banished to adultness unwished

floating scoops of ice-cream

find cones called forth by a clap of hands

policemen on roller-blades 

chase pedestrian crossings 

freed from the tyranny of tar

and the weariness of feet

was that a clarinet going higher than the highest tree

was it a squirrel that drew the curtains

was it the monsoon that’s curled in a mangosteen

and why couldn’t the avocado decide if it’s vegetable or fruit?

someone stuck flowers somewhere 

someone filled the balloons

someone alarmed an alarm clock

and a clothes line asked for tea

Do you hear the sound of that laughter?

Bus goes over precipice; eight including the driver dead, 29 seriously injured — News Item

“There was no mist at the time. I was in the front part of the bus.  There were no vehicles coming from the opposite direction, but the driver for no apparent reason suddenly turned the bus towards the precipice”  — a survivor

With a shaking left hand

Nandasena

driver of sixty three dash seventeen fifteen

the day’s first gear fell

giving out a gora-gora sound

the bus came out of the depot

and began climbing the mountains

Each time he checked the road

from the side glass on the right 

he only saw his wife

whose three month’s almsgiving

was done two days before

From the rear view mirror

frequently peeped

his little boy

who drew 

Thaththa’s bus

again and again

The echo of the horn

the bell that rant near his ear

he didn’t hear

his wife’s voice came through clear

“Further up near a bend

there’s been an earth-slip

I will warn you Nande

when you get closer

What did you have for dinner

and what did our son draw yesterday

and the little girl Nande

can she now plait her hair all on her own

In the midst of a ring of mountains filled with tears

upon the grass on that yonder slope 

there’s one singular place still Nande

where we can laugh

Can you hear the sound of that laughter….”

[translation of "ඇහෙනවද ඒ සිනා සද්දේ " from the collection "මීළඟ මීවිත" by Ruwan Bandujeewa]

Menaka

Clutching a posy of coffee flowers
at the foot of the mighty Uthuwankande
Mammale my friend,
there's sobbing I can hear --
it's Menaka

By the Hingula waters
to sit you down,
with a silver hairpin
I once from a bungalow took
decorate those locks
already bedecked with coffee-flowers,
step back and admire, 
another day will not dawn
Menaka,
not for me

Clutching a posy of coffee flowers
at the foot of the mighty Uthuwankande
there's sobbing I can hear --
it's Menaka.

[At Bogambara, on the 7th day of May in the year 1864]

[translation of "මේනකා" from the collection "මීළඟ මීවිත" by Ruwan Bandujeewa]

Dry lullabies

Where’s your mother gone?

To the chena of course

The loner was already there

they say

When I heard

to the chena I ran

and saw little beads of milk

all over its trunk

Where’s your father gone?

Why, to sell the rice

No, no, I lied

to gulp kaneru seeds he went

Look! A she-elephant

Peeping through the electric fence

Where’s my baby,

with a broken voice she asks

[translation of "වියළි නැළවිලි" from the collection "මීළඟ මීවිත" by Ruwan Bandujeewa]

The Canal

The well-dressed canal
walks through the paddy-fields

That an insomniac reservoir
had these clothes stitched
the canal has not
to a single rice stalk whispered
as yet

[translation of "ඇළ" from the collection "මීළඟ මීවිත" by Ruwan Bandujeewa]

The Gardner

The princess 

to the rose garden came

and sought the gardner out

Pull out the weeds

burn them all

ordered she

Upon the small weed flowers

unnoticed 

but to an up-close gaze

The gardner stood

and saw

and heaved a heavy sigh. 

[translation of "උයන්පල්ලා" from the collection "මීළඟ මීවිත" by Ruwan Bandujeewa]

Dear Grackle, how happy you must be!

“The Devi Ulakudaya
to a boy has given birth
Dear Grackle
how happy you must be!

The king will no doubt reward you now
and shower veneration on the author-bikkhu
for seven full days from now in Kotte
all manner of celebration there will be”

“The journey was nothing like the poem
no food, nothing to drink, no place to sleep
of what was described nothing did I see
I could not an order disobey
and to the God Vibheeshana passed the note

Listen, friend! While I was away
a rat-snake of formidable size destroyed my home
my daughter’s feathers were all over the place
and my love, of grief and a broken heart did die

The Devi Ulakudaya, the king and the haamuduruwo
they send three messages of condolence, this is true
but did not visit, said not one small word
at the funeral my sorrow to ease…”

[translation of "සැළලිහිණියෝ උඹට කොහොම සතුටක් ඇත්ද?" from the collection "මීළඟ මීවිත" by Ruwan Bandujeewa]

*The reference is to the Salalihini Sandeshaya (or 'The Grackle Letter') and epic poem written by Ven Thotagamuwe Sri Rahula Thera in the 15th Century during what is often referred to as the Golden Age of Sinhala Literature at the time King Parakramabahu VI reigned in Kotte.

Retrospection

What was it?

What was that thing

that danced all over keyboards

leaving paw prints in rainbow colours,

what was it that spoke 

of a heretic being stoned

and roses so soft

they cut glass?

What did rasakinda extract

in an absurd wrapping of heart?

What was that time

which passed as fragrance and syllable

in a cosmic synethesia —

a strain unnamed 

on account of rarity

and dismissed

as the mere ramblings 

of a lunatic

miseducated and lost

in territories too barren to map?  

The tree and the vine

[a love story]

To the vine, the tree said thus:

Look at you, poor thing!

Can’t stand straight,

condemned to crawl!

Come, dear one,

use me, climb

and survey

the vastness of the earth

rise!

To the tree, the vine replied:

Look at you, poor thing!

Rooted and immobile

denied exploration

and so, so very naked!

But fear not, love

conquests shall I forego 

and encounters that delight,

I shall spin a yarn

clothe and decorate

and from embarrassment liberate!

Night Scoops

Silhouettes: 

sentinels 

stationed and alert

the decree of reflected light

penumbral tenderness 

I scoop from the edges of night

and like holy ash anoint --

fingertips 

on forehead

and whisper

a timeless mantra

"Go, go to heart edge

seek laceration,

heal!"


[Pic, courtesy www.videezy.com]

Amaradeva

Silence is a product 
of all the songs

the high notes and low

the impossible mix

of birth and death

the concert of pauper and king

blend of unvanquished yesterdays

and impossible tomorrows;

silence is voice

cutting across memory 

navigating disbelief 

the marriage of the inevitable

with the fervent belief of immortality;

he’s gone

and in going

turned a country into a song

lined with the most transparent

of tears

music that drips

from life-edge and heart

so delicate

it’s called ‘silence’

for lack of better word

to describe 

a voice that’s gone

but stays

and stays. 

[Pic, Sandra Mack]

Status Update

Icons that burst into a thousand hearts

a snap, a tear, a kiss

a comfort zone and a dead end

togetherness and fracture --

in preferred colours and frill 

the art direction of love

in cyberspace is short-handed

but on this side of your news feed

hidden from timeline 

oblivious to like, share and comment

true hearts beat and break 

at impossibility

that hard-drive collapse too soft to save

the irretrievable moments 

of love that was or will not be.

Talha

A flurry of photographs

On a long black roll

That’s presentation

On the hell-heaven highway

Where few know

The cities at the end

Of left and right;

They are placed

In the nonchalance of liquid love

Open to the leaf-turn of wind and laughter

Framed by words

And the random intoxication

Of metaphors

And separated by the giggles of the insane

The genius glue of twist and spurn

And the embrace of divinities –

You were born in an unknown continent

And fly to galaxies unnamed

Re-birthing at every turn of whim

Far more than the 41 mentioned

in certificate and data base –

Softer still

Freshly unfolded leaves

breeze touch at a desert sunset 

light drops at a high altitude sunrise 

a baby's cheek

after bath, after wipes

and talcum blush

all soft
as other things unnamed

and yet

softer still is 

moment-after gaze

birthed by love's timeless submissions

and yet again

the silence 

of departures

inevitable

[in the name of love]

is softer still

so much, 

so much

softer.  

Identity-Fake

The classic version:
Steal a face
make a mould
then the mask
sell it back
demand and obtain gratitude.

Or alternatively:
Destroy spirit
Conjure replacement
lace it with the usual poisons --
poor, underdeveloped, backward
and as Gourevitch said
the robbed inhabit
the robber's version
of their reality
and look up whispering
'rich, developed, advanced'.

But today
an identity was stolen:
picture pick
same name
new page 
and yet
hearts are hearts
like heartbeats of nations
a hundred fakes 
cannot draw spirit
cannot impoverish
cannot say 'this is who you are'.

Some hearts are not for sale
and not for stealing. 

Swipe-freeze

Road ribbons of blue
wander among the green locks;
sorrow stains wash city cheeks
in the unending monsoon of absence. 

Proximities

On the other side of the rain mirror
in the lush comfort of blurry seasons
sun-drop and rain-drop
in wild carnalilty 
print an immemorial tease.

On this side of deceit
there's a floodplain 
where word-debris eyesore
forces blink or look-away.

For she's diminished 
in a conspiracy of circumstances 
where a harsh-word summoned
a dimensional-swirl and necessary silence.

She's close.
Though.

Closer than rain-drench
right here in dismissal and neglect
in the lost pages of unwritten books
that resist translation 
closer now in the eloping of ink
where ignorant rush
hangs broken heart-bits of blue and green
from the edge of night-trysts that came undone.

Close.
Same size
same butterflies 
in same back-forth flutter
of crazy words 
where love-scripts are re-written
in the lucidity of silence
rising as black-white monologue
and tracing the inevitable:
the floral pattern
of post-kiss time-freeze. 

Softness

Love in requitedness 
unfolds into butterflies and petals
and in its going and gone
collapses into voids so blessed 
that screams are exquisitely private
all kiss-me-nots and exquisite brambles
conscious venture into known traps
nights of lunacy
and deaths that never arrive,
softness that brims in eyes
and the edge of daybreaks;
soft hurts are hard-takes
and will not roll fingers into fist
stops at lip-edge 
is nudged from the high plateaus of innocence
but will not be embraced by earth-slip;
it's hard, so hard that it floats
among brigands and ghosts
the pickpockets of hope,
so soft is soft push-away
it yields a fragrance exquisite and lethal
tortures, but never kills.  

The beginning and end of forever

Forever begins

with heart-stop,

a virginal rebirthing

and umbilical dissolve

that separates and erases

all illusion

of heart, touch and things mis

named.

Forever never ends, though;

it just gets lost in the

Alzheimeic plains

of reason and other encounters

The first love is also the last, I think. 

[From the collection 'Some texts are made of leaves', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize 2011]

Ode to banishment

Beyond the railway track
parallel lives merge 
with words and laughter
and unexpected meeting of eyes
that obliterate narrative 
they are airlifted
from the island of  sorrow;
beyond lunchtime exchanges
heart-food digests 
with the after-wash
of spray and rain
tosses the gospels of love
re-numbers time's sad pages;
and in the later this-side
of trains and food
I am told
'I am sick of words'
and banished
to vast word-less continents
unparalleled 
and unhappily un-merged. 

Crazy love dreams

Over an embankment 
and exotic insomnia
tripping along stepping stones
in improbable arrangement
between and through library shelves 
surreptitious tiptoeing 
among forbidding commonalities 
in the flipping of scripts 
and recovered transliteration
thus did memory roll slumber 
and yielded the you 
of that other time of color 
so diminished now.

Residencing

And so I write to report,

that in the ambivalent crafting of landscape

that is city,

this symphony of multitude and madness,

in the discoloring of green and blue

among the soft stone in hard arrangement,

in the grand aggregate

and glossy individuality that contains nothing,

this too may pass in the relentless dissolve of time;

but perhaps a random girl

a creature of polite address and conversation,

petal and hue in a grand bouquet

of thorn, weed and synthetic assembly,

like a faint, familiar fragrance,

trapped in the amber of memory,

may remain.

[From the collection 'The Underside of Silence']

Wine Sutra

Lips are for wine

of a particular kind

but grape drawn intoxication

dark red or gold

is discolored and poor

against the liquid maturities

of heart aged wineries

that give distilled word-essence

and the exotic silent aftertaste –

and yet, for all the delights

of lip and heart

your extensive vineyard gives

it is the trace of fingertipped grace

on fingertip-lips

that’s wine unsurpassed.

පසන් කොඩිකාර

ආවා ගියා ද 

ගිහින් ආවද  

මෙහේම හිටියද 

තවමත්
ඇවිත්
නැද්ද?

ඒ කෙසේ වෙතත්... 

හීන් ම හීන් හඬකි 

ඇසුන නෑසුන 

සුවඳකි 

අතැඟිලි අතරින් ගිලිහෙන 

රසදියරකි 

දැනෙන නොදැනෙන ස්පර්ශයෙන් 

නොමැකෙන දෑ  කළ.

පිටස්තරයෙකි පිටුවහල් කළ 

හැඳුනුම් පතක් නොමැති 

නන්නාඳුනන හිතවතෙකි 

නේවාසිකයෙකි 

අනේවාසිකකම් කියා දෙන  

          ජීවිතයේ 

          ගීතයේ 

          වචනයේ           

          වීදියේ 

          ප්‍රේමයේ.

නික්මයාම තුල ජීවමානයි 

පරාජිතයි ඔහු අප පැරදුන බැවින් 

පිබිදී සිටී අප  අවදි කළ  බැවින්

තවමත් අසල්වාසියෙකි  

විශ්වාස කළ සත්‍යයන් ද 

අවතැන් වීම වෙනුවෙන්ද 

පෙනී සිටි බැවින් 

දෛනික සිපිරිගෙදරින් 

පලා  ගොස් 

තහනම් දේශයේ සිත් සේ 

මං පෙත් හෙළි කළ බැවින්  

මළවුන් අතර ජීවත් වූ බැවින්  

මියගොස් ජීවිතයට වරමක් 

දිනාගත් බැවින් 

කළු-සුදු විශ්වයකට  

වර්ණ වත් කරයි 

හීන් ම හීන් හඬකින් 

සුවඳකින් නම් කල නොහැකි.   

For Pasan Kodikara

He came in and went out

or was it the other way about?

Anyway, 

he was a whisper and a fragrance

utterly intangible

and yet with intangibility stamped

a presence that stayed and stayed;

he was ‘out’

as in outcast and un-belonged

he was ‘in’ 

in a way we could never be,

in life

in song

in word

in love

omnipresent in absence

absent in his astrally 

lost because we were lost

found because he found us

just by being

by inhabiting fidelity

to held beliefs of un-belonging

by trespassing 

out of everyday prisons 

by living 

among the dead

by dying

to enter the afterlife 

of life he crafted

with whisper and fragrance.

Also read:

Pasan Kodikara in and out of text

Pasan Kodikara -- a poet lost in translation

Pasan Kodikara left behind the softest footprints

Pasan Kodikara -- the perfect Bohemian

තිරය විවර වූයේ පරිපූර්ණ බොහීමියානුවාගේ නික්ම යෑමට යි

පසන් කොඩිකාර: පරිවර්තනයේ අතුරුදහන් වූ කවියෙක්