Handwriting (2 page)

Night fever

Overlooking a lake

that has buried a village

Bent over a table

shaking from fever

listening for the drowned

name of a town

There’s water in my bones

a ghost of a chance

Rock paintings eaten

by amoebic bacteria

streets and temples

that shake within

cliffs of night water

Someone with fever

buried

in the darkness of a room

        *

Lightning over that drowned valley

Thomas Merton who died of electricity

But if I had to perish twice?

Four men steal the bronze

Buddha at Veheragala

and disappear from their families

The statue carried

along jungle pathways

its right arm raised

to the jerking sky

in the gesture of

“protection” “reassurance”

towards clouds and birdcall

to this quick terror

in the four men

moving under him

The Buddha with them

all night by a small

thorn fire, touching

the robe at his shoulder,

vitarka mudra
—“gesture

of calling for a discourse.”

Three of the men asleep.

The youngest feeds the fire

beside the bronze,

allows himself honey

as night progresses

as sounds quiet and thicken,

the shift during night hours

to lesser more various animals.

Creatures like us, he thinks.

Beyond this pupil of heat

all geography is burned

No mountain or star

no river noise,

               nothing

to give him course.

His world is

a honey pot

a statue on its side

the gaze restless

from firelight

               He climbs

behind the bronze

slides his arm around

with the knife

and removes the eyes

               chipped gems

fall into his hands

               then startles

innocent

out of his nightmare

rubs his own eyes

He stands and

breathes night

air deep

into himself

swallows all

he can of

thorn-smoke

nine small sounds

a distant coolness

               Dark peace,

like a cave of water

In the dry lands

every few miles, moving north,

another roadside Ganesh

Straw figures

on bamboo scaffolds

to advertise a family

of stilt-walkers

Men twenty feet high

walking over fields

crossing the thin road

with their minimal arms

and “lying legs”

A dance of tall men

with the movement of prehistoric birds

in practice before they alight

So men become gods

in the small village

of Ilukwewa

Ganesh in pink,

               in yellow,

in elephant darkness

His simplest shrine

a drawing of him

lime chalk

on a grey slate

All this glory

preparing us for Anuradhapura

its night faith

A city with the lap

and spell of a river

Families below trees

around the heart of a fire

tributaries

from the small villages

of the dry zone

Circling the dagoba

in a clockwise hum and chant,

bowls of lit coal

above their heads

whispering bare feet

Our flutter and drift

in the tow of this river

Never build three doors

in a straight line

A devil might rush

through them

deep into your house,

into your life

A village of stone-cutters. A village of soothsayers.

Men who burrow into the earth in search of gems.

Circus in-laws who pyramid themselves into trees.

Home life. A fear of distance along the southern coast.

Every stone-cutter has his secret mark, angle of his chisel.

In the village of soothsayers

bones of a familiar animal

guide interpretations.

This wisdom extends no more than thirty miles.

i

We smuggled the tooth of the Buddha

from temple to temple for five hundred years,

1300–1800.

Once we buried our libraries

under the great medicinal trees

which the invaders burned

—when we lost the books,

the poems of science, invocations.

The tooth picked from the hot loam

and hidden in our hair and buried again

within the rapids of a river.

When they left we swam down to it

and carried it away in our hair.

ii

By the 8th century our rough harbours

had already drowned Persian ships

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

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”

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 south pasture

this insect that has

the letter “r” twice

in its name

vi