For my baby

You move
from unidentified to recognized
unfamiliar to familiar
as you discover hands, I discover a seeking
as you breathe your unspoken complaints
I discover potency
strength to equal your tenderness;
unnamed infant
how like me you are,
loved but lost
found but undiscovered;
little child I've a blanket for you
a heart that's yours, now and always
and that, little girl
is all I own
a cradle poorly made,
a desire to learn.
Teacher,
who knows not that she informs
tell me things:
about innocence
it's fragrance and recovery,
about unconditional love,
about growing up
without losing your name,
tell me how your heart beats
how innocence throbs through veins,
breathe into me
the breezes of your baby existence
and cure me of the weariness
that has invaded and remains.  

[This was written on November 10, 2003, less than two months after my little girl was born]

Send me all (or nothing)

Send me a mountain

I will describe it

shape, size and shadow

the greens, the grey and brown

erasable with the blues of distance;

send me a river

I will in its colour and temperature

wash away my sins

and call forth

the lost archives

of all the love stories

that can never end;

send me your ocean too

and I will drown my resistance

in its rolling sheets;

send me nothing

and I will on thin air fly

and all my words and silences

to you surrender .

The sound of impossible love

When tropical sunlight 
meets moonlight's winter blush 
call it time-warp 
or time-zone curl
or misbegotten error 
of tectonic shift 
but it's not melting snow
nor the startled whimper
of surprised forests
not the rustle of surprised seasons, no
 it's really love 
unwrapping.

හිස්තැන්

පියසටහන් පිපාසයෙන් බිඳෙන මාවතකි
කටහඬක් නොමැතිව වැලපෙන ගීයකි
පියාපත් එන තුරු මග බලන කුරුල්ලෙකි 
කවකට නොනැගු වදන් පෙළකි
ආලෝකය අධික බැවින් නොපෙනෙන එළියකි
රස බලන්නෙකු නැතිව සිඳෙන චොකලට් ගඟුලකි
මත්බව යදින මිදී පොකුරකි
රටවැසියන් දෙදෙනෙකු සොයන 
රටක් ලෙස නම් නොවුන බිම් අඟලකි.

Absences

There is a road crumbling for lack of feet

A song undone by want of voice

A pair of wings waiting for a bird

Words not yet composed into poetry

Light yet un-seen because of too much light

Chocolates melting for want of tongue

Grapes that yearn intoxication

And there’s a small corner

In our many worlds

A country unnamed

For want of citizenry.

Moving sunsets

Smudged faraways 
are for the impatient 
they don’t recede as believed 
 but blur upon the decision to seek; 
but then there are sunsets 
that come seeking 
for there are hearts 
 that respect 
that touch not the touch-me-nots 
not for fear or inability 
or any reason that can be explained, 
these are hearts protecting ember 
from gushing water and howling wind – 
sunsets come a-visiting 
in the kindred ways of flame 
for two hearts burn better 
and warm the clarities of togethernesses 
that were or will be 
or simply
meant to be.

A petition to stones

So let there be stones
beautiful ones
cut by hand or time
with edges that can wait 
for moonquake and anarchy
those necessary preconditions
for bloomage and bleeding
mirrors that fracture desolate skies
and trigger
the eruption of rainbows,
stones gathered 
from every stoning
that turned broken bodies
into words
to re-cleanse
our desecrated hearts.