Traditional poetry at its best

Reflections

Author: Lakshmi de Silva
Vijitha Yapa Publication
Reviewed by Prof. D.C.R.A. Goonetilleka

Lashing de Silva is well-known as an award-winning translator. It has also been long recognised that translation is a creative enterprise. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that she has published a collection of poems, especially to those who have already savoured the quality of her poetry in anthologies, foreign and local, and in journals.

The dedication of her volume to Marian Abeysuriya, nee Weeraratne, “whom many will salute as the perfect teacher of poetry”, indicates that de Silva’s skill as a poet was fashioned while still at school. Her opening poem, ‘In Lamplight (To Marian Abeysuriya)’, is charged with feelings for a kindred spirit.

The fact that the Contents page carries precise dates (‘Peradeniya 1956’, ‘Kelaniya University 1988’) suggests that they are often occasional poems, written over a period of 30 years or more. They, however, radiate beyond the occasions that prompted their writing. ‘Peradeniya 1956’ begins with

‘The sky was never so blue as that day
When light glass-winged seed drifting sunwards trapped light as we lay
On the grass side by side; we had gone there to cram
(Forced by the terror of a near exam)
The gathered wisdom (gathered from the notes
Of an earnest lecturer) of History’
yet ends with:
‘All that is gone
The sun is heat, not light. ‘No one can step
Into that river again’. Another age
Tension, slick words, manipulated rage
Have had their will. There’s blood upon this page.’
The sub-title of the poem, ‘History Notes’, incorporates a pun.

Personalities

Indeed, de Silva’s poems are deeply involved with events and personalities in Sri Lanka. ‘Dondra 1984’ is a two-line poem, yet telling:

'Beyond this point, the Antarctic. Little land
What shelter for your head? Only your hand.’

It reminds us of our darkest days, which so many years later may leave us unpardonably smug. The writer provides notes—when necessary to aid understanding.

The second line of this poem alludes to a Sinhala proverb, ‘For one’s head, one’s hand’--information given in the notes. The JVP uprising of 1971 spurred much notable writing in fiction but only a few short poems.

The best of these is by de Silva—‘Tangalla, April 9 1971’. Despite slogans scrawled on railway sleepers, on the side-walls of small shops and on rocks, despite large-scale thefts of firearms, despite snippets in the newspapers regarding insurrectionary activity (which, after all, originated in May 1965), despite “the threats of revolutionary violence made in the public speeches of Wijeweera [the leader] and continued in the JVP publications” as from August 1970 and reaching what should have been “alarming proportions at the beginning of 1971” (to quote A.C. Alles’ authoritative book Insurgency 1971), a general ignorance and complacency prevailed:

‘That too was real: the evening suns
Dripped like slow honey through the filtering leaves
Gilding the dried grass cropped by the pied goats
Foam lit blue sea, cloud lit blue sky; and peace
Dawned with clear morning, loitered by our eaves: ….’

Tranquillity

In this beautiful Southern coastal town, the surface tranquility exploded with the realisation that the insurrection too ‘was real’:

‘as this night we lie
Silently, listening to the crash of guns.’

The sense of actuality in this poem is a contrast to the poetry written in complete ignorance of the insurgency. It is also important to pay special attention to ‘General Hospital May 3rd 1986’, a poem sparked off by an LTTE terrorist strike.

It is to the credit of Sri Lankan writers in English (as well as in Sinhala and Tamil) that they have tried to come to terms with terrorism in their imaginative efforts, while their counterparts in India have been reluctant to do so in respect of the same phenomenon in their country, though they (for instance, Chaman Nahal and Kushwant Singh) have been quite willing to confront the Partition massacres.

I have not categorised de Silva’s poems as being political or social or personal because all these spheres merge into seamless entities whose significance alters one’s perspectives.

There is much nostalgia for the University of Peradeniya in its golden age in the late 1950s and early 1960s. ‘French Class 1958’ captures the mischief, fun and intimacy of the English Department in those years. I share in the sorrow over the untimely passing away of Upali Amerasinghe expressed in ‘In Memoriam’—a sportsman and scholar, outstanding in both fields, who made a strong impact on undergraduates.

All Sri Lankans, not only those who remember him from the Peradeniya days when Maname and Sinhabahu were launched in the open air theatre, will share in the tribute to Ediriwira Sarachchandra in ‘The Artist’; to Martin Wickremasinghe (in ‘Koggala’) who did not need a university education to become a colossus; and to Richard de Zoysa (in ‘Remembering People’) whose magnetic stage presence will remain in the memory of all those who were fortunate to see him perform.

Literate poet

Lakshmi de Silva is a literate poet, but her academic background obtrudes only once, in ‘The Death of Dion’ in which she has indulged in an attempt to break out of the cramping confines of the sestina, a poem of six verses where every verse has to end with the same six words rhymed in a particular rigid order, by employing it for a narrative poem. The subject is the Sicilian whom Plato identified in an epitaph:

‘O Dion, whose love once
maddened the heart within this breast.’
Dion’s life-story occurs in a long but poor poem by Wordsworth.

Free of any obsession with modernity in form or content, de Silva’s poems, like the best Sri Lankan poetry generally, is sturdily traditional (to call it ‘old-fashioned’ sounds derogatory) as well as direct and forceful.

They are not so much introspective as about issues to which readers could relate. Varying from the emotional to the flippant, the poems offer a whole range of interests. At a time when valuable books are beyond the reach of many readers, Reflections is moderately priced.