OBSERVATIONS: INDEPENDENCE
Seven school boys,
baseball players,
coach,
waiting for a train,
at Fort Station,
exploded;
18 passengers,
pilgrims, Kandy
to Dambulla,
private bus,
accompanied
by parcel bomb;.
grenade thrown
outside bird
cages
Dehiwala Zoo,
7 injured.
zoo closed;
Anuradhapura,
another 12
puffed out,
don’t have
details
yet;
SMS
stopped
on cell phones
during
Independence
Day parade
of heavy
weaponry,
Air force
bombs
communi-
cations
base
according
to Press
Spokesman
at HQ,
no scribes
allowed
to verify,
or human
rights group
to bring
food or
medicine;
letter
from home,
husband,
late to work,
sleeping pill,
maker of
documentaries
forbidden
to screen his
film, uncle
gathering
family
passports,
wedding
snaps. Who
in hell made
this hell,
muttered
under a
thousand
tongues;
shall we
ascribe
blame,
ask for
identity
cards
to be
stamped,
race
unknown,
then burnt,
ashes flung
into the Bay
of Bengal?
February 5, 2008
Editors note: Indran Amirthanayagam, as noted on his blog, writes poems in English, Spanish and French. He believes in the cross- cultural encounter and learned early from his parents to turn the other cheek yet keep writing poems on the face of the tyrant. I first met Indran at the sui generis Galle Literary Festival in January 2008, where he both launched and read from his Splintered Face Tsunami Poems (Hanging Loose Press, Jan. 2008). Both the poet and the poems are sublime examples of an imaginative power and quiet resolve able to transcend a more parochial violence.
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very “south” centered poem… no mention of the the multiple attacks on civilians in the vanni or the situation in the east… there’s plenty of reports if you look far enough instead of reading the colombo media
The poem recounts various tragic events; it does not purport to offer a complete list of horrors, nor does it have a particular geographic emphasis. Surely, the island is churning, spinning out of control, and one of the reasons sadly is implicit in the remark that these words of lament are indeed specific to one area …as far as I know Tamils also go to the Fort Station, and take buses to Dambulla.
traveler says it is very south centred. violence is violence no matter where. it is this very divide in our minds of “south” and “north” and “us” and “them” that is so insidious. the poem does say “race unknown”. what a small-minded reaction to a poem that is trying to talk about the bigger picture.
Sir,
From a point of literary criticsm it is a trifle prodigal to refer Mr A’s poetry as sublime example of imaginative power. From a practical view point what word do you use to describe Yeats Byzantium – ‘That dolphin- torn that gong-tormented sea’.
I would suggest this poem is merely a re-statement of current newspaper news in SMS lanugage giving the reader no greater clarity, depth nor scope of understanding as a result of reading. The language is flat and the reasoning uninspired. I propose for your consideration this poem as a typcial example of a now flourishing genre of expatirate poetry defined by a shallow sensibility backed by economic means combined with deft self promotion based on an exotiscing impulse.
In Sri Lanka, the absence of a rigourous critical tradition allows the writers of this genre to flourish on the premiseof mutually congratulatory quid pro quo. It is also a pity becuase the genuine, passionate poetic impulse, distilled by reason and given clarity by a poignant use of language has become passe.
Comment received via email in response to Preserved Killick from someone who had problem submitting a comment directly and wishes to go by “Indigenous”:
I hear in expatriate circles that the earth is flat and that Yeats will rise from his grave to announce the fact in the Irish Senate. Newspapers, certainly, are pure poetry. No need to highlight the poem in the body of the article.
There is a lot of beating gongs, of course, at the Annual General meeting of the Sri Lankan critics’ society. And recitals of Wordsworth’s Prelude. Newspapers are banned at such meetings.
I hear that a major publisher, begins with a P, might publish an Anthology of Expatriate Poetry. The flyer I read says that it promises to feature only the richest poets and especially those who have not learned yet to swim in the deepest waters of sensibility. The current critical term for these bards is exotic, and they are all brilliant if not subtle self promoters. In fact a competing term these days to describe their work is the I poets, the Me and Myself Bards–pernicious their influence has been over impresionable, young minds.
I wonder sometimes if they may succeed in banning the beating of gongs at our Annual General Meeting. I hope indeed that Yeats will survive his supporters…and his Byzantium not go up in flames.