Chiseler and chiseled

In chiseling meditation
the artist etched
lines and grooves
and the anticipated work
of wind, water and time,
so into rock face
and away from memory
he could duly disappear
and watch eyes countless
being glazed by image
and the master’s word

Wonderment

[for Mithsandi]

What magic wand do you wave
when with color and line and whiteness
tremendous distances you collapse
to cast in stone your heart?

Among the thousand and one
how is time for caress found
and how with infrequent and brief touch
are spells cast on cat, on dog, on me?

Is it star dust gathered and sifted
that glance and nonchalance decorate
as you flit from planet to planet
in snap-fingered nimbleness?

And how without flourish
or even painstaking dissolution
do you from vocabularies silence distill
and nevertheless so much say?

Take care

[for Dayadi]

Times of confidences come to me
as gardens from another planet
unnamed but clearly mapped
with libraries and books
songs and stories that would at will
break into flavors that soothed our tongues
and cured it of the harsh-word curse.

The claims of seniority and equality of status
length of knowing and love,
of poetry, places, phases and passion
did not count;
I belonged to her, through and through
then and forever, non-negotiable.

But we slipped, she and I
into orbits that seldom intersected
and were shrugged off
in the nonchalance of knowing
or things more pressing.

Old words torment the vacancies
threadbare histories nibble
and the edges of memory wince
in the inevitability of this time.

And then skipping through a paddy field
uncluttering doubts with fairy tale swish
she sprinkles the universe
with an eau de cologne smile.

She takes care to take care.

අක්බාර් පාලම

පරපුරෙන් පරපුරට පොදු වූ
එනමුත් අද්විතීය යැයි සිතන 
ආදරය, අනාදරය
රැවටිල්ල පැටලිල්ල
හොඳට දන්නා අක්බාර් පාලම
දෙඩවුයේ නැත මා සමග;
එදා මෙන් අදත් එලෙසම නිහඬව
ඓතිහාසික නිශ්චිත කම
සහ පැවැත්මේ තර්කය මතම
දැඩිව, දැඩිවම සිටියා පමණි --
කෙඳිරිල්ලක්, හුස්මක්, සුගන්ධයක් ලෙස
හිරු කිරණ, මුරකාවල් සහ උකුසු ඇස් අතරින් 
වැළඳ ගැනීම සහ දියවීම වෙත
පිය නගන්නට ඇයට.