Colombo, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict, Poetry

Death at Noon

Today dawned
Like any other morning

At the other end of the world
My sister sits nursing a cup of coffee
Her fingers numb
From minus twenty
Mind numb with shock.

Here, I drive to work
Still swear under my breath
at the driver of the truck that cut into my lane
Nearly killing me,
Plan my day
Tick off the list of things to be done:
A listening test to be recorded
A lecture to prepare for
A report to write
A professor to be contacted

Before lunch.
But more than four of my colleagues
Are in black and white
And I realise that includes me.
We stand around the
Water filter
Discussing ‘heroism’.
And no one is in a mood to work today
Even those joyous about captured
Territory.

Maybe we are numb too
Though it’s warm
and all we have today
Is a cloudy sky

[Editors note: A comment left on a blog I read regularly regarding the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge threw up an interesting (and timely) challenge to Sri Lankan poets. I pointed out this comment to Vivimarie, who responded with this poem.]