The island belongs
to centipede, rat,
butterfly,
lots of species
each with
their own habitats,
and supervising
all arable
and fallow land
the president king.

Minorities
may enjoy
clean living
in freshly cleared
forest patches,
welfare villages
with amenities
such as latrines
and tents,
gated communities.

June 28, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here.

219 Tamils
were rounded
up in Gampaha
town during
dusk to dawn raids.

They had no
proper id cards
and did not
offer adequate
reason

to be living
in the vicinity.
Their Sri
Lankan
citizenship,

rights to move
about the
multi-ethnic,
multicultural
country do

not hold up
to scrutiny
under Prevention
of Terrorism Act
which allows

for exceptions
to such liberal
silliness
as equality
under law.

For more information, click here.

Six boys
from Hindu College
will enter the scene
from Stage Left,

an equal
number of girls
from Muslim Ladies
Stage Right.

They will shake
their bodies,
slide and writhe,
and be still

to rid bones
of chains
and memories,
and invite

guests, us,
to sway
in harmony
even if

we’re away
from jungles
which give
shelter, or

ash-filled
homes
whose roofs
are open

to whistling
bombs
and winds
that sweep

left-overs
clean. That
Boxing Day
the Tsunami

swept
residents
out; now
the Army

marches in
four years
later to find
an abandoned

town, and
in nearby
woods
yakshas

howling
in Tamil
calling
for food

and water,
medicine,
safe passage
south…

while in
the capital,
as I imagine
the performance

must end,
on a stage
a boy and girl
will embrace.

January 27, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award …

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Citizens
of Killinochchi
and Mullaitivu
fled before
our liberators
arrived.

They live
for the moment
in nearby jungle
under a canopy
punctured
by shells.

Some moved
to a safe zone
demarcated
by liberators
where they
have fallen

since to errant fire.
Others ran into
liberators’ arms
and live now
protected in large
barb-wired camps.

January 27, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy, please click here.

The town is full of stray
dogs, cows, ghosts,
buildings pockmarked,

unhinged, open to wind
and rain. Soldiers patrol
on foot. Trucks and tanks

rumble through the center.
Rebels took all the fittings
to jungle cellars, and we wait

eagerly to discover how
the Supreme Leader makes
his bed. Look at Europe today,

Germany lost 500 kilometers
on its eastern flank. How many
young people know this history?

We will disappear. The tsunami
swept a lot away. Our failing
memory compensates for the rest.

January 27, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy, please click here.

As I write more than 250,000 civilians are trapped in jungle near Mullaitivu. They have little food, water and medicine. They are being injured and killed. They need help. Please speak to your representatives, write letters to your editors, insist that their plight be reviewed by the UN Security Council. Harming innocents is not a matter of internal security or civil war to be left to the warring parties in the Sri Lankan conflict. We must not be quiet. Let us make a lot of noise.

Let us make the bombers accountable to us.

Let us try to save a few lives.

Drop all charges
against
Tissanaiyagam.
his glaucoma
needs treatment
and his wife
will be grateful,

…and the Dean
of the Diplomatic
Corps will feel
less inclined
to speak
at public
acts of grievance.

I agree
we must not
interfere
with funerals.
leaves a bitter
taste on
the BBC’s tongue.

Inevitably
advisors
will counsel
banning that
Commonwealth
voice.
Yet, then

we must cope
with reporters
in disguise,
especially
these pesky
bloggers
who feel

empowered
to write
what they see
and hear
taste and
touch
as if witness

can make
bread out
of flour
or yams
sprout
in a
mineswept

Vanni.
And let me
not forget
the political
analysts
who worry
in public

that a failed
state will
be our cup
of tea.
I trust
you will
still drink

our fabled
single
leaf
beverage
and visit
our white
sand,

black
sand,
red
sand,
blue
sand
beaches.

During civilized periods
in the history of kingdoms
courtiers, or the king’s
person himself,
in audience
with the gadfly,
would offer the fellow
death or exile.

These days
assassins
butcher their fly
in daylight
near security
checkpoints
in front of
bewildered subjects.

My Lord,
Dutugemunu,
slayer of wild beasts
in northern
jungles, why must
we kill brother
Lasantha, shed
our own blood?

Indran Amirthanayagam, January 11, 2009

My feet
are tired
pressed
into asphalt
climbing
the campus hill,
composing
a sparer line:

effervescence
in mist,
swirling about
the stones,
a girl,
freckled,
jeaned,
auburn-haired

like the leaves,
walks past
my shadow,
a shadow,
the wish
to dissolve
into scenery,
flowering bush,

wind, chameleon
silent on a branch
not hurt or harassed
by predators
swooping down
from clouds :
over the A-9
Highway,

by Elephant Pass.

Indran Amirthanayagam, November 8, 2008

AFLAME – Remembering Black July, 1983

What is a poem
to a man hiding
in the cellar
of his neighbor’s house,

breathing the way
his hostess spices
lentils and mutton,
while son and daughter

keep quiet,
not one word
allowed
in the mother tongue,

and wife strokes
her neck,
the golden wings
of her thali,

and across the lane
a mob, ruffians,
tontons macoutes,
lynch squad, a few

holy men, politicians
in white vershtis,
light rage
and sew pestilence

in summer fires
that turn houses
to foundation stones
and stoke residents

out to shelter
at  neighbors,
St. Peter’s College,
the police station

near Bambalapitya Flats,
before three days
voyage on a ship
hungry to Kankesanthurai

where soldiers
have been swinging
cricket bats
and teenage boys

have stopped
playing cricket,
disappeared,
coerced

into resistance:
this war, these
flames burning
every day since,

and even before,
50 years ago,
1958, when mobs
first enforced

what was deemed
the people’s will.
by unleashing
latent and dark

social energies,
microbes that murder,
that insist on power
as well as alms,

that circulate
in the body politic
and …

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I remember an evening
flavoured by my mother’s
cooking, bringing
two smart patriots
together, to speak
about devolution
not yet realized,
accommodate
what makes sense
seeing the island
from afar, the only
way forward,

two dear friends
who met then
for the first time.
Now, one is laid
to rest, and
the other engages
readers still
to think afresh
about slow or fast
bombs, double-speak,
cynical tongues, how
to bring more than

twenty five years
of war to an end
before all our parties
break up and families
gather, with shot-gun
shells and confetti
to scatter, at weddings
held on holy ground
beside gravestones
where fathers and
brothers, mothers
and sisters are buried.

Indran Amirthanayagam, March 16, 2008

The rollercoaster’s
rolling full throttle,
has a new booster rocket
not subject yet

to safety experiment,
riders thrown every few
minutes, smashed
to ground, publicists

about to stop digging
hands into steaming
lampreys served
with fresh lime juice

to wonder perhaps
that this rate
of civilians hurled
to earth must not agree

quite
with amusement
park patterns
in the fabled

West
where children
go for rides
not to die.

February 5, 2008

Seven school boys,
baseball players,
coach,
waiting for a train,
at Fort Station,
exploded;

18 passengers,
pilgrims, Kandy
to Dambulla,
private bus,
accompanied
by parcel bomb;.

grenade thrown
outside bird
cages
Dehiwala Zoo,
7 injured.
zoo closed;

Anuradhapura,
another 12
puffed out,
don’t have
details
yet;

SMS
stopped
on cell phones
during
Independence
Day parade

of heavy
weaponry,
Air force
bombs
communi-
cations

base
according
to Press
Spokesman
at HQ,
no scribes

allowed
to verify,
or human
rights group
to bring
food or

medicine;
letter
from home,
husband,
late to work,
sleeping pill,

maker of
documentaries
forbidden
to screen his
film, uncle
gathering

family
passports,
wedding
snaps. Who
in hell made
this hell,

muttered
under a
thousand
tongues;
shall we
ascribe

blame,
ask for
identity
cards
to be
stamped,

race
unknown,
then burnt,
ashes flung
into the Bay
of Bengal?

February 5, 2008

Editors note: Indran Amirthanayagam, as noted on his blog, writes poems in English, Spanish and French. He believes in the cross- cultural encounter and learned early from his parents to turn the other cheek yet keep writing poems on the face of the tyrant. I first met Indran at the sui generis Galle Literary Festival in January 2008, where he …

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