Photo courtesy of Indran Amirthanayagam
Guy Amirthanayagam
(October 23, 1927- May 17, 2003)
My father would have enjoyed my new enterprise, writing the sonnet free
of the common shackles of obligatory rhyme but standing still in the glorious
frame of fourteen lines. He was a modernist, fan of Eliot, Frost and Yeats.
He loved to say let us go then you and I and saw his own lilacs sprouting
from the cold earth in Spring, but after reading a few thousand books
and turning closer to the imagined and deeply felt God his favorite Eliot
was Christian and that late poem Four Quartets. The poet Guy Amirthanayagam
wrote criticism as well introducing the idea of the marriage of continents
to contemporary discourse, focused now on multicultural energies forming
hybrid cultures. Guy, the diplomat, made peace among ethnic rivals, believing
for a time in a Ceylon governed by honor and ethics. His hopes for this illusion
diminished as the civil war raged. Guy, the husband and father left us
on May 17, 2003 to carry on thinking of a possible revival of love
and grace in a country driven to the precipice in 2022 but standing still.
Indran Amirthanayagam, c) May 17, 2022
