Photo courtesy of CNBC
How to select keys for the door
when you know the gatekeeper all
too well, when chance and destiny
carry the same code words,
when love no longer depends
on brute desire, when warships
and helicopter gunships gathered
on the sea, in the sky, and citizens
ran from market to house to cellar,
rosary beads in fingers and wind
lashing hair of their young warriors
who defended the land until
the land bled and the land dried
and those who managed to flee
returned to pick up the deeds still
in civilian hands. This is Jaffna
today, a proud city, unbowed
but circumscribed by the state’s
occupying army that will
not represent its minorities,
asking them to make amends,
to adjust, to work within
constraints, to argue about
even the right to handle
local security, poll taxes,
licenses to fish and till
and cement the pot-holed
road. What sad fears
are propagated by
disinformation gurus
in Colombo, that
the unitary state must
be held together with
a bayonet from a
surveillance tower,
and plainclothes spies,
and breaking bones of
the odd scribe who
looks too closely into
the never abandoned well
of hope and water and pride.