Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 3, No 1: CLRI February 2016
Poems by Indunil Madhusankha
Let Peace Sweep through Our Minds
(“Nahi Werena Werani” - Hatred Never Ceases by Hatred)
For three long decades
the nation was beaten
in no small measure
at the eruption of the terror bomb
that dispelled mankind straight to death
in thousands
of whom the blood gleamed in the same carmine
be it Sinhalese or Tamils
So why this obsolete, spoilt stratification?
Vermillion balls of crystallized blood
mingled with white sand like carnelian
everywhere in the Jaffna peninsula
Precipitously blasted vehicles
Charred remnants of smashed houses
Sky-climbing buildings,
flattened to the ground and vanished
Dead bodies put inside
kerosene stained blackened tires
And how the roasting corpses lifted themselves
in the raging flames
mirroring the killing injuries
The day the Aranthale sky
turned grey in thundering scream
Mammoth massacre of saffron robed monks,
the earth-splitting sin
Streets studded with mounting bullets
and heaps of dagger ridden and
bullet embedded bodies
stinking with the stench of the rotting bodies
that hung in the air
Swollen, pale bodies swathed
in blood soused clothing
and prostrated on grubby pavements
Detached heads with bloody tongues
leaping out of the mouth
The parched bodies' ashes
mixed with air reeking through the island
In concentration camps, mantraps and
human abattoirs in dense forests
death yell crisscrossing far and wide
Carious human skeletons like bogies
and plain blood blotches in them
waft horribly the calamitous terror committed
Man hunting atrocities of Tigers,
Guns, hand bombs, landmines
and multi-barrels
trumpeted the death knell of thousands victimized
Doom tumbled on the innocents
in warfare amidst
the shower of flesh
and the whirlwind of bullets
Freshly budding young ones
snatched away from their parents' bosom
Merciless urging to rush to arms
Cuddle-some children huddled on
torn out, crumpled mats
in the darkened sheds
With their eyes tightly pressed
by soft tiny hands,
they howled in indefinable fright
scared by the rackety bellow of gunfire
Saturated in utter darkness
with his incorrigible megalomania
to approach an unreachable destination,
fragmentation of the searing island
He with his fellow Tigers
pulled the trigger to
an unendurable death toll of over 70,000
What hearts of stone they have?
Did they achieve anything
except bloodletting and
the record breaking exhibition of
abnormally catastrophic massacres?
Heavily venerated Tigers
enshrined in their heroic pantheons
with Granite tombstones
What did they really attain?
Mere decease and decadence
He is already in his
cortege to the cemetery
The masses are earnestly awaiting
to say him a big good bye
Some request to catch him
and hang him up like a dog
so that they can pitch stones at him
It is no small anguish crushed in their hearts
Yet, the Buddha insists,
“Hatred never ceases by hatred.”
Think of the perennial truth
couched in the pristine, untarnished dharma
On the other hand,
would it halt the repetition
of murderous history
bloated with blighting monstrosities?
The punishment to him
will not do,
at all,
But the inculcation of peace in our minds
So let peace sweep through our minds!
So let peace sweep through our minds!
Hint
Aranthale Massacre: The carnage of 33 Buddhist monks, a majority of them being young novice monks, by the Tamil Tigers on June 2, 1987 in the vicinity of the village of Aranthalawa in the Ampara District of Eastern Sri Lanka Tigers, The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers), a separatist organization which aimed at creating an independent Tamil state (known as the Tamil Eelam) in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka thus paving the way for the Sri Lankan civil war (1976-2009).
Humans or Beasts
“Yesterday's clash claimed thirty lives of the terrorists,
The nation's acclaim to our valiant forces!”
The dashing lady appearing in the TV
uttered with her rosy lips in great rejoicing.
Besides the efflorescence of
high sounding crackers,
whom did they kill?
over whom did they win?
Terrorists
Nevertheless,
they all are humans,
having the same blood and flesh
What is it that separates terrorists from humans?
Once the opposites go down
the others organize a party
with the glamour of dancing
Not having even the least thought
that the others are not beasts
but humans they too are,
their own brothers,
though provoked
Can you burst into jollity
as your brothers remain flotsams in a blood sea?
What an astonishment?
Merry making in the
celebration of fratricide
The fashionable pleasures of our days!
A Worker Repeats History
His life had ever
been far from easy
The bulk of the bricks
in the cart
always used to
be a companion
though it remained
hard-hearted
The rumpled dirty rag
with no less than
a dozen of patches
barely saved him
from the fierce sunbeams
It is only the tiny
rivulets of salty sweat
pouring down his cheeks
that knew how
wrinkled he was
On that day,
the scorching sun,
its blinding rays,
and even the burning
sands in the site
They all witnessed it
And yet stood still,
as if they did not
Oh, the poor man
He could not endure it,
the pile of boulders
that thrashed
him abruptly
while hiding him
amidst itself
And, then
he disappeared
as he breathed his last
The next day
I saw another man
sweating out to hold
the craggy blocks of rock
Thus he fills the lacuna
and he repeats history
