Mr. Aushwitz

It's difficult to melt away from memory the chunk of blue ice that had frozen in his eyes,
The numbers tattooed on his arms
And the belt he used to whip the woman who'd been there with him
And is now keeping silent on the balcony.
"A pity," his voice used to cut, "That Hitler didn't work extra hours."
And the cacti in pots were sticking out like the barbed fences
Of the camp he'd fled from.
Foam was spilling from the well of his poisonous mouth,
And he used to wipe it with the flag hanging there from one Independence Day
To the next.
"Mr. Aushwitz," we shouted the time they took him away to the asylum,
And he managed to put his hand into a pocket and peel off
Cellophane from the candies he threw at us.

The Milk Underground - Ronny Someck Translated by Robert Manaster and Hana Inbar

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The poet evocatively recalls the horrendous past of Hitler's concentration camp Auschwitz with its tattooed walls. It was in those camps that Jews were reduced to ashes. However, now the camp serves as a potent symbol of holocaust. The poet uses a simple yet evocative language personifying the concentration camp Auschwitz. - Indeewara

Requiem

(For Parami Kulatunga)

I did not know you, General,
haven't been where you've been,
haven't seen what you've seen,
I walked this land on other feet,
its textures, its fruit-laden winds,
the songs authored by clash and respite
and accompanied by the crackle of burning grass,
sad, haunting voids filled with conversation
gunshot and scream,
its immeasurable patience
the snapping of command
and the tenderness
of a mobile defense line dripping wistful dreams:

These things I've recorded, but in a different language.
I did not know you, General,
not in the way our land made friends
made peace with you,
not in the clasping of hand
and the resolute embrace of breast against breast
as such you've probably known.
I have not known the weight
of certain bloods,
the length and breadth of your solitude
the expression of a soldier as death approached.

When you laughed, General,
was it to hide the heart's intimate affair with brutality
or to say that life was softer than fear
and therefore a worthwhile proposition,
a justification to celebrate with smile
even as it was made of tear?

I did not know you, General,
But I will recognize your breath
and blood
when elemental movement causes certain intersections
of moment with word
horror with love, friend with stranger, friend with enemy.

And when these juxtapositions beyond transcription
post me missives about a land that gets tilled
about lovers who can still kiss
politicians who can continue to play the games they play
mendicants who seem to receive
though the giver knows not of their receipt,
about chess squares and square cuts,
about papers that are published
and features that ought to as well,
let me assure you, General,
you shall not go unreceived.

You see, I never knew you, General,
but in your refusal to leave,
I've found that this land is worth residence
and that residence is a child,
made of broken skin and sutured hope,
it is a song that will be played, General,
not because you've chosen another universe
but simply because you've walked this one
and because upon the dust you disturbed
and the dust you left untouched
there is a singular title, a gravestone legend:
Unvanquished. Malinda Seneviratne

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This poem is dedicated to the memory of Major General Parami Kulatunga who was killed by the LTTE. Though the poet does not know the fallen war hero personally, he recognises his breath and blood which are the same. The General smiled in the face of death associated with war. The poet imagines that the smile was to say that 'life was softer than fear'. The poet concludes with an evocative line 'there is a singular title, a gravestone legend: Unvanquished'. It is the gravestone legend which cannot be conquered. -Indeewara Thilakarathne

Grahadeveta

The House Goddess

Is"! Other, your child is drowning in the river,
Driftwood borne by the water's current.
Where?
Mother, your child is floating like a rainbow
Coloured fish into a nowhere world of birth
And death, the gills slowly filling with a
Suffocating gush of water.
Mother, you walk away, away, away
Over the river on that spanned bridge
Into the nothingness of your life.
Your child flung into the swift flowing
Waters.
Mother, have you forgotten your name?
Mother do you have a name?
Mother do you not remember that you are
The source of life, that you carried your
Child under your heart for nine months
And that he does not go out of your heart
Ever again.
Do you remember the Buddha's discourse
On universal love and of the mother
Who even at the risk of her own life
Protects and loves her child
That you are the great mother
The mother of all that is created.
Have you forgotten that you are the creatress
Of this child?
Did you not name him?
Wipe his newborn body clean leaving it
As pure and white as a freshly peeled almond?
Did you not give sustenance at your breast
As he slept beside you?
Mother, there's a fish dying dying so slowly
Gasping for breath and yet you walk away

Away, away, blindly, stony your heart.
Mother do you think there will ever be forgetfulness.
Or sleep or hunger for you again.
Don't you see it's your life floating
Along the river,
A dying fish.
In your next birth what will you be,
What will your child be
You will join in that rebirth
Of which those will be several,
Shoals of fish once human'
Ready to be netted
Your body quivering
Gasp for breath or be devoured by some
Greater predator as you swim with flailing
Fins in the surge of Time's river.
For you there will neither nirvana nor
Oblivion but the eternal suffering of never ending
Births in the darkness and murk of a life
That never ends. - Jean Arasanayagam

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Motherly love is sacrificial and knows no bounds. However, this narrative poem is on a sad occurrence where mother throws her child into the water as she could hardly afford to feed it. Mother walks away while the child was gasping for life in the water of the river like a gold fish among the drift wood.

The poet recreates the situation with a masterly of expression depicting intense sorrow and agony on the part of the hapless child. Crushing poverty has precipitated the generation who are eternally in the darkness, even to throw into the gushing water of a river. The poet concludes the narrative poem that there will be no Nirvana for the mother. The poet uses a simple diction with common place metaphors to drive the message home. - Indeewara Thilakarathne