Poems of a wide range

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Musings and Meanderings Collection of Poems by Derrick Mendis S.J.

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I was as much impressed as I was intrigued by these poems written by a Jesuit priest, who has witnessed, experienced and captured the curious subtleties of God's creation, on land, underwater and in outer space.

When attempting to assay a collection of poems, one may be expected to get into the theatre forthwith, with gloves and masks and a variety of scalpels to perform the wanton surgery of literary criticism.

I prefer to tread a meandering route that leaves room for picking up time-worn pebbles that reveal the character of the man and his poems. The Jesuit community, despite the rigour of spiritual exercises in which they engage have the uncanny knack of producing men of rare insights.

Among them, are the English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, St. Jean de Brebeuf, Aloysius Pieris and the 'Big Fisherman' whose meanderings follow the stream of life-giving water.

A priest, by virtue of his training and outlook, is generally inclined to arrest the fluidity of time by partitioning it into the atomised parts of a liturgical year. By virtue of this same inclination he feels more at ease with prose than poetry.

The men, whose names I have mentioned, share one thing in common.

They do not see the world as a sanitized, homogenized, deodorized and disinfected plane. Their world is one of 'Pied Beauty' where they merrily intone "Glory to be God for dappled things - skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; for rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim" (Gerard Manley Hopkins).

It is in the same mode that Aloysius Pieris speaks of "prophetic humour in Buddhism and Christianity" and St. Jean de Brebeuf, who as he ministered to the Huron Indians in Canada, wrote treatise on Huron grammar and translated the Catechism into that language. He wrote a lyric about the birth of Jesus Christ in that language, which in one translation reads as follows: "As they entered and saw Jesus they praised his name. They oiled his scalp many times, anointing his head with the oil of the sunflower. Jesus, he is born."

In this collection of poems Derrick M. s.j. expresses his response to the wide, wild world, as a thanksgiving for 'pied beauty' and dappled things. He has apportioned his poems under several subheadings: Spiritual Life, God, the World and I, of Nature and Places, the Prophetic Voice and the People of God.

I will start my review as he insinuates himself into the idiosyncrasies of nature and places. His version of 'Pied Beauty' is in itself pied as he moves from Brianna, the lady-like lass of six of whom he says "This elegant Miss is comely, sweet", to a Pied Kingfisher of whom he writes:

"Down he plummets-a lightning streak,

Sharp as arrow his pointed beak,

Into water he disappears,

Up he comes with a fish he spears."

The author compares the soothing caress of water in the sea, a river or a poll to a mother's embrace.

Water calls me to her arms

Even as a child or boy

Her cool embrace filled me with joy...

We never dreamt that we must pay

For drinking water any day

Turning in his grave must be,

My grandpa at this tragedy."

The author's grandpa-paternal, James Bernard Mendis, was a tall tower of a man. Since savouring kinsman-ties is a harmless foible, as long as it does not tilt the scales or start a riot, let me say that his wife Mary Ignacia, nee de Silva Wijeyeratne was the youngest sister of my paternal grandfather.

The author's interest in nature takes him through the life-muddle of "bugs, beetles, bees and butterflies, tadpoles, leeches geckoes and dragonflies." Mosquitoes that sting, fireflies that glam, Caryl the one-eye squirrel and the koala bear are also part of his menagerie. Of the speechless nidi-kumba he says:

"Like hands

Clasped in prayer

No single plant

Ever responded

So promptly

And spectacularly

To my touch."

The author's relationship with his God, which is in the nature of an intimately private and joint enterprise with his partner, truth-crucified, stands in stark contrast to the pontifical bludgeon of contrived holiness.

He does not define this overriding phenomenon as a matter of clinical theology with the traditional attributes of the mighty God of Abraham, but describes it as a frolicsome Mother, who knows all but connives:

"I thought I heard her calling me,

Hiding behind a rock or tree,

Elusive God I yearn to see,

She plays hide and seek with me."

One poem, which I would call the paradox of suffering, sums up the author's involvement in the human predicament. It is the prayerful plea of a leper, who cries:

"Lord give me pain, grant me this grace,

'Tis my earnest supplication.

The dreadful patch on my dear face,

Is devoid of all sensation."

As an accompanying pilgrim in the ecclesial mode, I thoroughly enjoyed his piece on the 'Exemplary Catholic', who while observing the letter of the Church laws, "To the Hilton in his Jaguar he went and then remembered t' was a Friday in Lent". He didn't touch a scrap of forbidden flesh but primed himself with baked crab and lobster thermidor.

This collection of poems leads one away from the madding mass of literary conceits, and altar egos, that has marred life in Sri Lanka and the entire world. The author has also included his pencil sketches of birds, flowers and fish to display the visual contours of his poetic perception. Once in your hand, it will not permit you to put it away.

You may put it away only if you hear the haunting sound of a bamboo flute, playing paslams or baila or the song about growing old with silver threads among the gold; but all this is in the book.

- Emard de Silva Wijeyeratne