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BIRTHDAY APOLOGY AND APOLOGIA: 80 iambic
pentameters for my 80 years
Regi Siriwardena, journalist, writer, linguist, literary critic,
editor, and human rights activist, celebrated his eightieth birthday
recently. While he first established his reputation as an editorial writer
for the ANCL's English language newspapers, Mr. Siriwardene subsequently
earned fame first as the script writer of the film 'Gamperaliya' , which
became the first Sri Lankan film to win an international award, and then,
as one of the country's leading film and literary critics.
All the while, a tireless activist on basic human rights and ethnic
rights - being a founder-member of several human rights groups beginning
with the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) - he also established himself as a
writer of prose and poetry. This poem was read by the author when he was
feted on his birthday at a function held at the International Centre for
Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo.
Regi Siriwardena
To have existed while the planet made
Eighty revolutions round the sun is no
Achievement, but I must confess I am
Rather surprised to find myself still here.
It's scandalous at eighty years to walk
The earth where younger, better people now
Are dust and ashes. Thinking only of those
Who died of violence and had much more
To give - Rajini, Richard, Neelan - makes it
Embarrassing to be alive. However,
I never hungered for longevity:
My mother's family's sturdy peasant genes
Must have prevailed, although my father left me
A diabetic legacy - a nuisance.
But I shouldn't complain: to compensate,
I have acquired immunity to other
Infections - post - modernism, for one,
And free verse, for another. I'm glad, too,
I never caught, as my late brother did,
The Sinhala nationalist flu. An early shot
Of Marxism, perhaps, took care of that.
2
When I was young, I said to my friend Herbert
A fine designer of stage-sets, a cook
Of creative genius, a treasury of lore
Of all things Lankan - 'If you'd only stuck
To one thing, Herbert, you'd by now have been
The top of that tree.' 'But, putha, how boring
To stick to one thing!' Now, at eighty, I know
I've been, like him, a fickle butterfly
Flitting from field to field, from flower to flower.
The kindest word they'll find to say of me
Is versatile. But do I really wish
It had been different? What a bore to be
The sovereign of some scholarly half-acre,
Crowned for a thesis on 'Semiotics of
Consonant Clusters in Six George Keyt Poems'!
To change the entomological metaphor,
I'm Grasshopper, not Ant, in the old fable
(Or Gracehoper, in James Joyce's version).
Writing, I have enjoyed myself, laid up
No masterpieces to outlast the winter,
But hope I've pleased somebody now and then
With a poem here, or a play there, and if
My tombstone is a footnote in small print
In literary history, that's okay.
3
By time's mere flux, I'm called to play the part
Of patriarch I am unfitted for.
But not for long, I hope. When the time comes,
Ajith, Prince of Obituarists, will write,
I know, a graceful piece - measured, as always,
And free of flattery or fulsomeness.
(A pity I shan't be there to read it, though.)
I don't believe there's judgment after death,
Or penal court of Yama: if there were,
And I were called to account, what could I say
In mitigation of sentence, but stammer,
'P-please, Sir, I tried not to be p-pompous ever,
P-pretentious, Sir, incomprehensible,
Or b-boring.' Would the judge pronounce severely:
'A frivolous trifler! He deserves no mercy.
I sentence him to fifty years of torture
Translating into Serbo-Croat the texts
Of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha!'
4
When you are old, you find that simple things
You took for granted are no longer simple.
Climbing the three steps to the office door
Is now an Everest-scaling feat; crossing
The street, a perilous odyssey. However,
Age has its compensations. You have grown,
Perhaps not wiser, but at least more prudent.
You can admire a woman's charm and beauty
With no possessive demons plaguing you.
Books and CDs that you once cherished dearly
Are burdens now you're glad to shed: even
The sight of the half-empty shelves is pleasing.
And so, to quote a poet I never liked,
'Port after stormy seas'. To all those friends -
Too many to be named - who've helped me past
The whirlpools and the rocks, my heartfelt thanks.
This makes eighty pentameters.
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