Handwriting Read online

  We drove cylinders into the earth

  to discover previous horizons

  In the dry zone we climbed great rocks

  and rose out of the landscape

  Where we saw forests

  the king saw water gardens

  an ordered river’s path circling

  and falling,

  he could almost see

  the silver light of it

  come rushing towards us

  iii

  The poets wrote their stories on rock and leaf

  to celebrate the work of the day,

  the shadow pleasures of night.

  Kanakara, they said.

  Tharu piri…

  They slept, famous, in palace courtyards

  then hid within forests when they were hunted

  for composing the arts of love and science

  while there was war to celebrate.

  They were revealed in their darknesses

  —as if a torch were held above the night sea

  exposing the bodies of fish—

  and were killed and made more famous.

  iv

  What we lost.

  The interior love poem

  the deeper levels of the self

  landscapes of daily life

  dates when the abandonment

  of certain principles occurred.

  The rule of courtesy—how to enter

  a temple or forest, how to touch

  a master’s feet before lesson or performance.

  The art of the drum. The art of eye-painting.

  How to cut an arrow. Gestures between lovers.

  The pattern of her teeth marks on his skin

  drawn by a monk from memory.

  The limits of betrayal. The five ways

  a lover could mock an ex-lover.

  Nine finger and eye gestures

  to signal key emotions.

  The small boats of solitude.

  Lyrics that rose

  from love

  back into the air

  naked with guile

  and praise.

  Our works and days.

  We knew how monsoons

  (south-west, north-east)

  would govern behaviour

  and when to discover

  the knowledge of the dead

  hidden in clouds,

  in rivers, in unbroken rock.

  All this we burned or traded for power and wealth

  from the eight compass points of vengeance

  from the two levels of envy

  v

  In the forest of kings

  a Dilo Oil tree, a Pig Lily,

  a Blue Dawn Bonnet flower

  Parrot trees. Pigeon Berries.

  Alstonia for the making of matchsticks

  Twigs of Moonamal for the cleaning of teeth

  The Ola leaf on which to compose

  our stanzas of faith

  Indigo for eyelids, aerograms

  The mid-rib of a coconut palm

  to knit a fence

  Also Kalka, Churna,

  Dasamula, Tharalasara …

  In the south most violence began

  over the ownership of trees,

  boundary lines—the fruit

  and where it fell

  Several murders over one jak fruit tree

  vi

  For years the President built nothing but clock-towers.

  The main causes of death

  were “extra-judicial execution”

  and “exemplary killings.”

  “A woman said a man pretending to be from the

  military made her part with four jak trees in

  her garden as a consideration for obtaining the

  release of her son arrested some years earlier

  during the period of terror.”

  —Daily News 15.10.94

  asd

  The address of torture was off the Galle Road in Kollupitiya

  There were goon squads from all sides

  Our archaeologists dug down to the disappeared

  bodies of schoolchildren

  vii

  The heat of explosions

  sterilized all metal.

  Ball bearings and nails

  in the arms, in the head.

  Shrapnel in the feet.

  Ear channels

  deformed by shockwaves.

  Men without balance

  surrounding the dead President

  on Armour Street.

  Those whose bodies

  could not be found.

  vii

  “All those poets as famous as kings”

  Hora gamanak yana ganiyak A woman who journeys to a tryst

  kanakara nathuva having no jewels,

  kaluwan kes kalamba darkness in her hair,

  tharu piri ahasa the sky lovely with its stars

  2

  THE NINE SENTIMENTS

  (Historical Illustrations on Rock and Book and Leaf)

  i

  All day desire

  enters the hearts of men

  Women from the village of __________

  move along porches

  wearing calling bells

  Breath from the mouth

  of that moon

  Arrows of flint

  in their hair

  ii

  She stands in the last daylight

  of the bedroom painting her eye,

  holding a small mirror

  The brush of sandalwood along the collarbone

  Green dark silk

  A shoe left

  on the cadju tree terrace

  these nights when “pools are

  reduced by constant plungings”

  Meanwhile a man’s burning heart

  his palate completely dry

  on the Galapitigala Road

  thinking there is water in that forest

  iii

  Sidelong coquetry

  at the Colombo Apothecary

  Desire in sunlight

  Aliganaya—“the embrace

  during an intoxicated walk”

  or “sudden arousal

  while driving over speed bumps”

  Kissing the birthmark

  on a breast,

  tugging his lotus stalk

  (the literal translation)

  on Edith Grove

  Or “conquered on a car seat”

  along Amarasekera Mawatha

  One sees these fires

  from a higher place

  on the cadju terrace

  they wander like gold

  ragas of longing

  like lit sequin

  on her shifting green dress

  iv

  States of confusion as a result

  of the movement of your arm

  or your hidden grin

  The king’s elephants

  have left for war

  crossing the rivers

  His guards loiter in the dark corridors

  full of chirping insects

  My path to this meeting

  was lit by lightning

  Your laughter with its

  intake of breath. Uhh huh.

  Kadamba branches driven

  by storm into the bedroom

  Your powdered anus

  your hair on my stomach

  releasing its heavy arrow

  v

  The curve of the bridge

  against her foot

  her thin shadow falling

  through slats

  into water movement

  A woman and her echo

  The kessara blossom she kicks

  in passing that flowers

  You stare into the mirror

  that held her painted eye

  Ancient dutiful ants

  hiding in the ceremonial

  yak-tail fan

  move towards and climb

  her bone of ankle

  The Bhramarah bee is drunk

  from the s
outh pasture

  this insect that has

  the letter “r” twice

  in its name

  vi

  Five poems without mentioning the river prawn.

  vii

  The women of Boralesgamuwa

  uproot lotus in mid-river

  skin reddened by floating pollen

  Songs to celebrate the washing

  of arms and bangles

  This laughter when husbands are away

  An uncaught prawn hiding by their feet

  The three folds on their stomachs

  considered a sign of beauty

  They try out all their ankle bracelets

  during these afternoons

  viii

  The pepper vine shaken and shaken

  like someone in love

  Leaf patterns

  saffron and panic seed

  on the lower pillows

  where their breath met

  while she loosened

  from her hips the string

  with three calling bells

  her fearless heart

  light as a barn owl

  against him all night

  ix

  An old book on the poisons

  of madness, a map

  of forest monasteries,

  a chronicle brought across

  the sea in Sanskrit slokas.

  I hold all these

  but you have become

  a ghost for me.

  I hold only your shadow

  since those days I drove

  your nature away.

  A falcon who became a coward.

  I hold you the way astronomers

  draw constellations for each other

  in the markets of wisdom

  placing shells

  on a dark blanket

  saying “these

  are the heavens”

  calculating the movement

  of the great stars

  x

  Walking through rainstorms to a tryst,

  the wet darkness of her aureoles

  the Sloka, the Pada, the secret Rasas

  the curved line of her shadow

  the Vasanta-Tilaka or Upajati metres

  bare feet down ironwood stairs

  A confluence now

  of her eyes,

  her fingers, her teeth

  as she tightens the hood

  over the gaze of a falcon

  Love arrives and dies in all disguises

  and we fear to move

  because of old darknesses

  or childhood danger

  So our withdrawing words

  our skating hearts

  xi

  Life before desire,

  without conscience.

  Cities without rivers or bells.

  Where is the forest

  not cut down

  for profit or literature

  whose blossoms instead

  will close the heart

  Where is the suitor

  undistressed

  one can talk with

  Where is there a room

  without the damn god of love?

  3

  Flight

  In the half-dark cabin of Air Lanka Flight 5

  the seventy-year-old lady next to me begins to comb

  her long white hair, then braids it in the faint light.

  Her husband, Mr Jayasinghe, asleep beside her.

  Pins in her mouth. She rolls her hair,

  curls it into a bun, like my mother’s.

  Two hours before reaching Katunayake airport.

  Wells

  i

  The rope jerked up

  so the bucket flies

  into your catch

  pours over you

  its moment

  of encasement

  standing in sunlight

  wanting more,

  another poem please

  and each time

  recognition and caress,

  the repeated pleasure

  of finite things.

  Hypnotized by lyric.

  This year’s kisses

  like diving a hundred times

  from a moving train

  into the harbour

  like diving a hundred times

  from a moving train

  into the harbour

  ii

  The last Sinhala word I lost

  was vatura.

  The word for water.

  Forest water. The water in a kiss. The tears

  I gave to my ayah Rosalin on leaving

  the first home of my life.

  More water for her than any other

  that fled my eyes again

  this year, remembering her,

  a lost almost-mother in those years

  of thirsty love.

  No photograph of her, no meeting

  since the age of eleven,

  not even knowledge of her grave.

  Who abandoned who, I wonder now.

  iii

  In the sunless forest

  of Ritigala

  heat in the stone

  heat in the airless black shadows

  nine soldiers on leave

  strip uniforms off

  and dig a well

  to give thanks

  for surviving this war

  A puja in an unnamed grove

  the way someone you know

  might lean forward

  and mark the place

  where your soul is

  —always, they say,

  near to a wound.

  In the sunless forest

  crouched by a forest well

  pulling what was lost

  out of the depth.

  The Siyabaslakara

  In the 10th century, the young princess

  entered a rock pool like the moon

  within a blue cloud

  Her sisters

  who dove, lit by flares,

  were lightning

  Water and erotics

  The path from the king to rainmaking

  —his dark shoulders a platform

  against the youngest instep

  waving her head above him

  this way

  this way

  Later the art of aqueducts,

  the banning of monks

  from water events

  so they would not be caught

  within the melodious sounds

  or in the noon heat

  under the rain of her hair

  Driving with Dominic

  in the Southern Province

  We See Hints of the Circus

  The tattered Hungarian tent

  A man washing a trumpet

  at a roadside tap

  Children in the trees,

  one falling

  into the grip of another

  Death at Kataragama

  For half the day blackouts stroke this house into stillness so there is no longer a whirring fan or the hum of light. You hear sounds of a pencil being felt for in a drawer in the dark and then see its thick shadow in candlelight, writing the remaining words. Paragraphs reduced to one word. A punctuation mark. Then another word, complete as a thought. The way someone’s name holds terraces of character, contains all of our adventures together. I walk the corridors which might perhaps, I’m not sure, be cooler than the rest of the house. Heat at noon. Heat in the darkness of night.

  There is a woodpecker I am enamoured of I saw this morning through my binoculars. A red thatch roof to his head more modest than crimson, deeper than blood. Distance is always clearer. I no longer see words in focus. As if my soul is a blunt tooth. I bend too close to the page to get nearer to what is being understood. What I write will drift away. I will be able to understand the world only at arm’s length.

  Can my soul step into the body of that woodpecker? He may be too hot in sunlight, it could be a limited life. But if this had been offered to me today, at 9 a.m., I would
have gone with him, traded this body for his.

  A constant fall of leaf around me in this time of no rain like the continual habit of death. Someone soon will say of me, “his body was lying in Kataragama like a pauper.” Vanity even when we are a corpse. For a blue hand that contains no touch or desire in it for another.

  There is something else. Not just the woodpecker. Ten water buffalo when I stopped the car. They were being veered from side to side under the sun. The sloshing of their hooves in the paddy field that I heard thirty yards away, my car door open for the breeze, the haunting sound I was caught within as if creatures of magnificence were undressing and removing their wings. My head and almost held breath out there for an hour so that later I felt as if I contained that full noon light.