Poems
Bud
Hearken to my entreaty
O! lotus bud.
Remain in that budding form
For ever
Concealing the beauteous visage,
Upon the crystal waters
Of the limpid lake.
The nimbus clouds above
Would shelter you
From the enervating heat
Of the mid-day sun.
The breeze, parading through
The howthorn mountain range
Laden with fragrance,
Would softly move you
Into a delicate dance,
Akin to the head movement
Of a lissome lass,
In a bharata natya performance.
Should you mature
Into full blossom,
Flirtatious bumble bees
Would visit you
To circle round
With humming music,
And woo you
With blandishments
Provoking you into a numbing swoon,
Till the nectar is being sucked
With temerity.
You would then be left
In the lurch forlorn
Of what worth
Is the poignant beauty,
Of what worth
Is the wafting fragrance,
When the valued
Nectar is lost.
- Kamal Premadasa, Mattegoda HS
Happiness
I searched and searched
for the greatest happiness
in the warble of nightingales
in the rumble of thunder
in the sweet resonance of a verse
but alas! I could never find it.
I walked and walked
along the heaty roads
through the river banks and valleys
among the fragrant flowered trees
for so many years
but I could not find the greatest happiness
At length I found it in a heart
of a person lives far and far
from each others apart
who is called a true friend
as a painting made on a wall
which never turns its eyes away from my soul.
Catherine Gunawardene, Dewalegama.
Shock absorbers of the world
From the time the nuptial knot is tied
And death would outstretch her arms
A woman would die a hundred deaths
And manage yet to keep calm.
Hardships, toiling, stress and strain
Travails of everyday life
Births and deaths and ailing health
Are borne with courage and might.
She learns to laugh when her heart would cry.
Keeps awake when her body is asleep
She'd quench the thirst and appease the pangs
Of hunger in others forsaking her needs.
Bumps and bounces, bruises, knock-outs
Heart rending cries of one's own
Distressing news, untimely deaths.
She has stamina to stand them all.
She'd warm up her home, keeping off the cold
Smiles when her misery is ten-fold
Externally delicate, but her inner-self is bold
Women are the shock-absorbers - of the world.
- Asoka Palliyaguruge, Kundasale.
Re-tracing journeys - I
I listen to stories from
the past.
observe the light-spun
years sifting through
layers of scintillating
heat and parched
marigolds.
The soft patter
of footsteps remind
me of a by-gone age
when a solitary
rickshaw driver traversed
these silent roads
and the light on the
hills searched passage
amidst the mana grass
hills of Hantane.
Grandfather cooked a
beef curry in the
smoke filled kitchen
tended his vegetables in the
garden below the house,
entertained guests each
evening, smoked his
pipe, watching tendrils
sift through a desolate
road and played classical music
on his bamboo flute.
The grandchildren sifted
through dust-layered
encyclopaedias and books
on travel, re-tracing the
past, travelling through
the gaze of John Buchan
in a moment of transition.
I question history,
find myself alone
in the arboretum of time,
glimpsing fleetingly
those faces from the
past in sepia tinted
photographs lulled in
history's timescape.
I wonder who I am,
a hybrid amidst a thorn -
filled garden where once
roses bloomed,
hear echoes of fragile
voices which lie embedded
in my complex past
and watch the endless line
of traffic on a dust-
filled road, observe
the twinkling gaze of a
TV station on a mountain
crest.
I am reminded of change,
as I walk in a silent garden
filled with the reflection
of stars both past and
present in a moments solitude.
Where have they gone?
Those neighbours across
the road, who played
the piano for hours and
sang carols at Christmas.
"Migrated", someone says,
to a landmass sifted by
desert winds and isolation.
Where are they?
I call out lost and
bewildered in a silent
world which no longer
cares for the left-behinder,
the hybridized being,
left to exist like a
plant starved for water
in search of a perennial
stream.
And yet as I gaze
upon this desolate
landscape
I am reminded of
a past, strewn with
ashened debris from
burning houses,
the aftermath of
a conflagration
I am reminded once
more of my vulnerability.
-Parvathi Solomons Arasanayagam
**** Back ****
|
