Photo courtesy of Ruki Fernando
This anniversary marks a stage,
a pause in the fighting, does not
a lasting peace reflect( especially
when celebrated as if one party
won). But dictates of reason,
and saving what’s left, and
exhaustion, meant going abroad
as the solution while the attention
span of foreign observers and
sympathizers reached a limit.
They moved quickly to other
conflicts. But mothers and sisters
of the disappeared remain mothers
and sisters bereft and have no closure,
no news, no trials. So for them this
war has not come to an end. And
for me who did not lose an immédiate
family member but various heroes
in the larger and motley family
of artists and thinkers, I invoke
Richard now and Neelan and ask
did their souls, along with those
of other scribes and witnesses–
can one name every one murdered
in one space?–are they at rest? In
that famed and elusive bower
we call peace ( or rather absence
from war) and day to day life
in the island of forget me not
and forget everything as if one
can wipe away thirty years of
war with an act of the mind,
a self-imposed mental armistice?
I write to honor the dead and
I write to remember the war
so at least as long as we are
alive we will burn candles
for those stolen, kidnapped,
wiped away from court
records and some history
books, but not in our collective
elegy, these lines my offering.