Commemorating poetry that unifies the world

We continue from our last week’s edition where we featured the poetry of Sri Lankan writers and those of the world in a special edition to commemorate World Poetry Day which fell on 21 March.

Sakunthala, a lawyer by profession and a veteran poet and children’s story writer throws light on the panic to do good that befalls on us when we near the end of our journey and we do not want to suffer wherever it is we may end up. She juxtaposes this craving to get pin for afterlife comfort, which in essence is selfish because it does not spring from acts of kindness to others as one would do for oneself but rather something that is done as yet another accumulation for one’s own benefit.

She quotes in the poem a line from the Lebanese origin poet Kahlil Gibran who was a stringent critic of the hypocrisy of early Christian Orthodoxy and wrote about idyllic humanistic and non-attached love that is notably described in his masterpiece ‘The Prophet’. 

We now feature another poem by Sakunthala Sachithanandan from her book ‘On the Streets and Other Revelations’. This poem is titled ‘Riches’.

I sit, my many riches spread about me.

I glory in the feeling that we are millionaires, no less

So fortunate, so blessed 

With so much, it makes me giddy to just glimpse 

Under this very table, at my feet about a hundred 

And there, under another, perhaps another hundred 

Over there, again, they lie, about a hundred and fifty 

I tremble in the knowledge that they are ours!

No common baubles these, although 

In the sun they hung and swung 

On the Karutha Colomban tree slowly ripening 

Joyfully eaten, chewed up, dropped 

By the hungry squirrels, birds and bats 

To fall and rot, blue bottles all a-buzz!

Sometimes we will step on one 

And to our unsuspecting toes 

Would stick the golden, yellow, smelly pulp

Here they life in all their green gold glory!

Splendid, mute and plump, mat skinned and heavy 

Their promise wafting up in their heady scent 

Signaling what is yet to come – and then the skin 

Peels off like strips of plastic to reveal 

Swollen orange flesh with a myriad drains 

Marking the route of the skin’s miniscule veins 

A feast follows then – the first ecstatic bite 

And the other, luscious morsels of delight 

As often as we give away these treasures 

To kith and kin and friends – this generous tree 

Bears another load and yet again another,

Offering us its bounty for the season

The birds and bats and squirrels go on feasting 

They’re hungry to be rich and so are we!

The poem details out the generous abundance of nature through the description of a Karutha Columbaan mango tree – the iconic mango variety of Jaffna – the North of Sri Lanka. 

We now feature a poem from the collection ‘Rhythm of life’ by Psychiatrist and author Dr. Ruwan M. Jayatunga. This poem is titled ‘A Schizophrenic – Please don’t label me’.

My world is limited 

Filled with wired sounds 

I see Rocky Marciano 

Fighting with Woody Allen

Long time ago 

Aliens abducted me 

They fixed wires into my brain 

Then sucked out my brain substance

I cannot control my thoughts 

Because thoughts control me 

Some kind of energy is inside me 

Giving continuous commands 

I hate to go to the Bush House in London

Where the BBC transmits by thoughts 

People often express amusement 

When they read my thoughts 

A man with a black jacket 

Is an agent of the KGB

He is spying and trying to track me down 

Maybe he wants to take me to Moscow 

I was in Lubianka

As questioned by Lorenthy Beria 

I was released by the NKVD

Then planted in Pennsylvania  

When JFK was murdered 

I knew the secret plot 

No one took it seriously 

Not even my psychiatrist 

They called me a Schizophrenic 

Branded me for the rest of my life 

They said I could be a danger 

Kept a watchful eye on me 

Whatever I wore 

I felt an invisible label behind my back 

Probably it said

That I am a Schizophrenic 

To be continued next week

The poem is a sympathetic synopsis of how modern day clinical psychiatry may forever tarnish the future of a human being. It can motivate us to took deeply at how those of us who call ourselves sane – may be attitudinally imprisoning others in the jail of mental illness while not seeing our own aberrations.   

We now feature a poem from the book Down Memory Lane by S. Pathmanathan (Sopa), one of the senior most poets from the North of Sri Lanka who at age 85 is still persistently pursuing his literary journey. The poetry is written in English and the book was launched last year. The poem we have selected is titled ‘Amma’s boys’.

It was a few weeks

after his wedding

Arul a was having breakfast 

‘Egg isn’t properly fried!’ 

‘It is ok. I fried it myself’! 

The new bride answered 

‘Amma would do it better with just dry coconut leaves!’

‘I know you always prefer her delicacies!’ 

The focus of this dialogue was Periyamma 

the eldest sister of my mother 

Very traditional in her ways 

skilled in maintaining the balance between salt and tamarind 

She would do wonders with spices 

a pinch of this 

a pinch of that 

Arul’s wife was reluctant to give in 

‘Your people 

add a lot of coconut milk 

salt and tamarind!’ 

‘Essential ingredients, aren’t they?’ 

Arula vetoed her 

Last month 

my son was back home 

He lives in Canada 

with his wife and children 

He’s in the kitchen 

seated on the floor 

relishing the kool 

served by his mother 

from the earthen pot! 

I think wives have to put up

with the encomiums 

their husbands shower 

on their mothers 

All husbands are amma’s boys

The poem is one among others through which the writer takes the reader through the path his birth and childhood trod upon and  through the dialogues, hallways and occasional idiocracies of family and friends that we witness we can visualise a past that exists in the mind of the writer.

The book Down Memory Lane by S. Pathmanathan was translated into Sinhala under the direction of Professor of Athropology, Praneeth Abeysundara and featured as an online edition of the Jayawardenapura University Department of Anthropology website as a step to foster understanding between Sinhala and Tamil writers. The book was translated for the Jayewardenepura University by Kanishka Wijerathne, Daya Dissanayake and Oshada Abeysundara.

We now feature a poem by Cheran Rudhramoorthy, the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil poet now living in Canada. A sociologist by profession Cheran was a journalist in Sri Lanka in the 1990s and has written much about the national misery of civil war and terror acts such as the burning of the Jaffna library. 

A letter to a Sinhala friend (written in 1984)  

It will not take many days

for you

and your friends

to recover from the shock

of meeting me, an ordinary man,

from an unseen and distant land

where, you had heard,

we sow lead-shots from guns

instead of seeds; a place

half full of two-storied houses,

half full of terrorists.

As we sat side by side

on the steps leading down

to the milky stretch of water

covered in glinting fine threads,

shreds of the moon’s curtain –

water that changed colour when its

muddy depths were stirred

and changed again with the shadows

of passing clouds –

my heart melted

when you sang a Sinhala song

in your sweet voice.

Once long ago –

I was a small boy then –

waiting at the Maho station

for the Batticaloa train,

I walked with my father for a while,

some distance along the railway lines.

Midnight.

The quiet sound of a lullaby

murmured through the wind.

The shock of that gentle sound

intercepting the baby’s cries

struck my heart that night

with sudden sadness.

Today too 

I am enveloped by

a fine grief.

Did our different languages, after all,

put such distance between us

that we could not smile together,

nor savour 

the beauty of falling ponnocchi flowers

blown down by the tumultuous Aadi winds,

nor those sudden moments of hesitation

when the long-tailed peacock

stopped and turned around in its stately walk?

I could not pluck for you

the single peacock feather you desired

nor, in the early hours of the night,

accompany you, as you wished,

across the moonlit grass

Your eyes could not hide

these small disappointments,

nor can I

forget your gentle affection.

We went our ways without maiming Nature,

leaving the flowers to blossom

and the grass to flourish

you to the south

and I to the north.

At daybreak, when

the cool breeze climbs down

from the huge trees

along the mountain ranges,

as you take your walk

brushing your teeth,

you will remember the days

when we worked together

excavating an ancient city at Maanthai,

and our brief friendship.

Tell your people

here, too, flowers bloom,

grass grows,

birds fly

As we read this poem we can keep in mind the context it was written in – the year the poem was written was cited as 1984 which marks the beginning of the unrest in the North that led to full-fledged armed conflict. While we may linguistically label or interpret in diverse ways the thirty years that followed, what remained at the core were dead bodies of human beings in their prime of youth. In between lay a chasm to be filled with understanding, empathy, caring and love. From 2009 we have had this chance and the biggest gift we could give each other being the gift of peace. Sri Lanka, a land in which Buddhism is enshrined, is a nation which can, each day, grow in discipline and kindness to give the world the message of peace. 

The attempt of this edition of the Harmony page was to celebrate poetry – the language of the heart and although there were many other poets and poetry that we wanted to highlight, space limitation made us focus on a fragment instead. However, we will continue in this endeavour, especially through the Thribasha endeavour to promote translations and readings of literature in Sinhala, Tamil and English.