We drove cylinders into the earth
to discover previous horizons
In the dry zone we climbed great rocks
and rose out of the landscape
Where we saw forests
the king saw water gardens
an ordered river’s path circling
and falling,
he could almost see
the silver light of it
come rushing towards us
iii
The poets wrote their stories on rock and leaf
to celebrate the work of the day,
the shadow pleasures of night.
Kanakara, they said.
Tharu piri…
They slept, famous, in palace courtyards
then hid within forests when they were hunted
for composing the arts of love and science
while there was war to celebrate.
They were revealed in their darknesses
—as if a torch were held above the night sea
exposing the bodies of fish—
and were killed and made more famous.
iv
What we lost.
The interior love poem
the deeper levels of the self
landscapes of daily life
dates when the abandonment
of certain principles occurred.
The rule of courtesy—how to enter
a temple or forest, how to touch
a master’s feet before lesson or performance.
The art of the drum. The art of eye-painting.
How to cut an arrow. Gestures between lovers.
The pattern of her teeth marks on his skin
drawn by a monk from memory.
The limits of betrayal. The five ways
a lover could mock an ex-lover.
Nine finger and eye gestures
to signal key emotions.
The small boats of solitude.
Lyrics that rose
from love
back into the air
naked with guile
and praise.
Our works and days.
We knew how monsoons
(south-west, north-east)
would govern behaviour
and when to discover
the knowledge of the dead
hidden in clouds,
in rivers, in unbroken rock.
All this we burned or traded for power and wealth
from the eight compass points of vengeance
from the two levels of envy
v
In the forest of kings
a Dilo Oil tree, a Pig Lily,
a Blue Dawn Bonnet flower
Parrot trees. Pigeon Berries.
Alstonia for the making of matchsticks
Twigs of Moonamal for the cleaning of teeth
The Ola leaf on which to compose
our stanzas of faith
Indigo for eyelids, aerograms
The mid-rib of a coconut palm
to knit a fence
Also Kalka, Churna,
Dasamula, Tharalasara …
In the south most violence began
over the ownership of trees,
boundary lines—the fruit
and where it fell
Several murders over one jak fruit tree
vi
For years the President built nothing but clock-towers.
The main causes of death
were “extra-judicial execution”
and “exemplary killings.”
“A woman said a man pretending to be from the
military made her part with four jak trees in
her garden as a consideration for obtaining the
release of her son arrested some years earlier
during the period of terror.”
—Daily News 15.10.94
asd
The address of torture was off the Galle Road in Kollupitiya
There were goon squads from all sides
Our archaeologists dug down to the disappeared
bodies of schoolchildren
vii
The heat of explosions
sterilized all metal.
Ball bearings and nails
in the arms, in the head.
Shrapnel in the feet.
Ear channels
deformed by shockwaves.
Men without balance
surrounding the dead President
on Armour Street.
Those whose bodies
could not be found.
vii
“All those poets as famous as kings”
Hora gamanak yana ganiyak A woman who journeys to a tryst
kanakara nathuva having no jewels,
kaluwan kes kalamba darkness in her hair,
tharu piri ahasa the sky lovely with its stars
2
THE NINE SENTIMENTS
(Historical Illustrations on Rock and Book and Leaf)
i
All day desire
enters the hearts of men
Women from the village of __________
move along porches
wearing calling bells
Breath from the mouth
of that moon
Arrows of flint
in their hair
ii
She stands in the last daylight
of the bedroom painting her eye,
holding a small mirror
The brush of sandalwood along the collarbone
Green dark silk
A shoe left
on the cadju tree terrace
these nights when “pools are
reduced by constant plungings”
Meanwhile a man’s burning heart
his palate completely dry
on the Galapitigala Road
thinking there is water in that forest
iii
Sidelong coquetry
at the Colombo Apothecary
Desire in sunlight
Aliganaya—“the embrace
during an intoxicated walk”
or “sudden arousal
while driving over speed bumps”
Kissing the birthmark
on a breast,
tugging his lotus stalk
(the literal translation)
on Edith Grove
Or “conquered on a car seat”
along Amarasekera Mawatha
One sees these fires
from a higher place
on the cadju terrace
they wander like gold
ragas of longing
like lit sequin
on her shifting green dress
iv
States of confusion as a result
of the movement of your arm
or your hidden grin
The king’s elephants
have left for war
crossing the rivers
His guards loiter in the dark corridors
full of chirping insects
My path to this meeting
was lit by lightning
Your laughter with its
intake of breath. Uhh huh.
Kadamba branches driven
by storm into the bedroom
Your powdered anus
your hair on my stomach
releasing its heavy arrow
v
The curve of the bridge
against her foot
her thin shadow falling
through slats
into water movement
A woman and her echo
The kessara blossom she kicks
in passing that flowers
You stare into the mirror
that held her painted eye
Ancient dutiful ants
hiding in the ceremonial
yak-tail fan
her bone of ankle
The Bhramarah bee is drunk
from the s
outh pasture
this insect that has
the letter “r” twice
in its name
vi
Five poems without mentioning the river prawn.
vii
The women of Boralesgamuwa
uproot lotus in mid-river
skin reddened by floating pollen
Songs to celebrate the washing
of arms and bangles
This laughter when husbands are away
An uncaught prawn hiding by their feet
The three folds on their stomachs
considered a sign of beauty
They try out all their ankle bracelets
during these afternoons
viii
The pepper vine shaken and shaken
like someone in love
Leaf patterns
saffron and panic seed
on the lower pillows
where their breath met
while she loosened
from her hips the string
with three calling bells
her fearless heart
light as a barn owl
against him all night
ix
An old book on the poisons
of madness, a map
of forest monasteries,
a chronicle brought across
the sea in Sanskrit slokas.
I hold all these
but you have become
a ghost for me.
I hold only your shadow
since those days I drove
your nature away.
A falcon who became a coward.
I hold you the way astronomers
draw constellations for each other
in the markets of wisdom
placing shells
on a dark blanket
saying “these
are the heavens”
calculating the movement
of the great stars
x
Walking through rainstorms to a tryst,
the wet darkness of her aureoles
the Sloka, the Pada, the secret Rasas
the curved line of her shadow
the Vasanta-Tilaka or Upajati metres
bare feet down ironwood stairs
A confluence now
of her eyes,
her fingers, her teeth
as she tightens the hood
over the gaze of a falcon
Love arrives and dies in all disguises
and we fear to move
because of old darknesses
or childhood danger
So our withdrawing words
our skating hearts
xi
Life before desire,
without conscience.
Cities without rivers or bells.
Where is the forest
not cut down
for profit or literature
whose blossoms instead
will close the heart
Where is the suitor
undistressed
one can talk with
Where is there a room
without the damn god of love?
3
Flight
In the half-dark cabin of Air Lanka Flight 5
the seventy-year-old lady next to me begins to comb
her long white hair, then braids it in the faint light.
Her husband, Mr Jayasinghe, asleep beside her.
Pins in her mouth. She rolls her hair,
curls it into a bun, like my mother’s.
Two hours before reaching Katunayake airport.
i
The rope jerked up
so the bucket flies
into your catch
pours over you
its moment
of encasement
standing in sunlight
wanting more,
another poem please
and each time
recognition and caress,
the repeated pleasure
of finite things.
Hypnotized by lyric.
This year’s kisses
like diving a hundred times
from a moving train
into the harbour
like diving a hundred times
from a moving train
into the harbour
ii
The last Sinhala word I lost
was vatura.
The word for water.
Forest water. The water in a kiss. The tears
I gave to my ayah Rosalin on leaving
the first home of my life.
More water for her than any other
that fled my eyes again
this year, remembering her,
a lost almost-mother in those years
of thirsty love.
No photograph of her, no meeting
since the age of eleven,
not even knowledge of her grave.
Who abandoned who, I wonder now.
iii
In the sunless forest
of Ritigala
heat in the stone
heat in the airless black shadows
nine soldiers on leave
strip uniforms off
and dig a well
to give thanks
for surviving this war
A puja in an unnamed grove
the way someone you know
might lean forward
and mark the place
where your soul is
—always, they say,
near to a wound.
In the sunless forest
crouched by a forest well
pulling what was lost
out of the depth.
The Siyabaslakara
In the 10th century, the young princess
entered a rock pool like the moon
within a blue cloud
Her sisters
who dove, lit by flares,
were lightning
Water and erotics
The path from the king to rainmaking
—his dark shoulders a platform
against the youngest instep
waving her head above him
this way
this way
Later the art of aqueducts,
the banning of monks
from water events
so they would not be caught
within the melodious sounds
or in the noon heat
under the rain of her hair
Driving with Dominic
in the Southern Province
We See Hints of the Circus
The tattered Hungarian tent
A man washing a trumpet
at a roadside tap
Children in the trees,
one falling
into the grip of another
Death at Kataragama
For half the day blackouts stroke this house into stillness so there is no longer a whirring fan or the hum of light. You hear sounds of a pencil being felt for in a drawer in the dark and then see its thick shadow in candlelight, writing the remaining words. Paragraphs reduced to one word. A punctuation mark. Then another word, complete as a thought. The way someone’s name holds terraces of character, contains all of our adventures together. I walk the corridors which might perhaps, I’m not sure, be cooler than the rest of the house. Heat at noon. Heat in the darkness of night.
There is a woodpecker I am enamoured of I saw this morning through my binoculars. A red thatch roof to his head more modest than crimson, deeper than blood. Distance is always clearer. I no longer see words in focus. As if my soul is a blunt tooth. I bend too close to the page to get nearer to what is being understood. What I write will drift away. I will be able to understand the world only at arm’s length.
Can my soul step into the body of that woodpecker? He may be too hot in sunlight, it could be a limited life. But if this had been offered to me today, at 9 a.m., I would
have gone with him, traded this body for his.
A constant fall of leaf around me in this time of no rain like the continual habit of death. Someone soon will say of me, “his body was lying in Kataragama like a pauper.” Vanity even when we are a corpse. For a blue hand that contains no touch or desire in it for another.
There is something else. Not just the woodpecker. Ten water buffalo when I stopped the car. They were being veered from side to side under the sun. The sloshing of their hooves in the paddy field that I heard thirty yards away, my car door open for the breeze, the haunting sound I was caught within as if creatures of magnificence were undressing and removing their wings. My head and almost held breath out there for an hour so that later I felt as if I contained that full noon light.