Revolution

She stands like the ripe grain

bathed in harvest sunlight

a golden smile dancing with the wind;

approaches at dusk

moving like the shadow of the hills

to take me into the night.

And my love is like water

now gushing down river

now halted at the gates

now spilling over

swirling around her feet

and disappearing underground

with monsoon-flight.

My love is a breeze

heaving sighs across valley

touching cheek

in the ‘cannot stay’ way;

and my love

is also the arc of the sickle

a dull pounding

separating grain from husk,

it is like the earth

keeping watch

drawing all things into its bosom.

[From the collection 'Epistles: 1984-1996']

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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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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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