Photo courtesy of Global Sri Lankan
Poems are waiting in a queue. But that is alright.
They are poems only, not people lining up for
kerosene, or fish, or paper. or petrol. I write them
in a hurry, focusing eye and ear, grateful I have
these organs still. I am listening to wind blowing
over Galle Face Green, on the ground where tents
of Gotagogama once stood. Memory is fickle,
fading. Was this where the library passed out
books, or you lined up for medicine at the first aid tent,
or food in the communal kitchen? I am travelling
there in mind with a tour group. On July 9th
Aragalaya turned the nation away from the precipice,
and plans were hatched on this patch of grass,
in all-night sessions, calls for protests, for
the people to rise and reclaim their rights
and nation. The dictator fled. Now Emergency
rules and the Prevention of Terrorism Act must
be thrown into the dustbin. We have to walk
again under laws we can trust, that apply
to everybody equally. These are not vain
or utopian ideas. We can get this done.
The spirit of Aragalaya has travelled from
this green beside the sea through the country
and the world. Ordinary people everywhere
are dreaming of people power, of exercising
sovereign rights, of getting poems into
the queue and not dying any more
waiting for kerosene.
