Confrontations

 

The land is ripped apart

in this war

dying figures writhe in

the fissured ground in

an alien territory,

which was once filled with

bird song and the soft

falling sound of fruit

on the dry earth, before

the monsoons began.

and the land became inundated

gushing forth in conduits

of blood.

 

Men and women combatants,

soldirs, war mongers

and pacifists, join the

encounter, this unending

conflagration,

abandon their traditional roles

within a familied structure,

intent on their missions

to control the land,

seeking ideologies of a greater

freedom, restrictions, trammels,

and hierarchies like the horizon

in those limestone basins at

K.K.S. which were once filled

with the sound of sea breezes,

travelling inland,

now transformed into a battleground

in this endless conflagration.

 

 

 

Yesterday's Postscripts

 

We stand waiting, moments

tick past, and yet that

van does not appear

at the distant bend.

 

The change is ready

exact to avoid any

confrontation to the

giver and observer

 

I shuffle my toes,

unconscious of the grit

that slips within my toes,

and feel moments of self -

doubt, questions like

whatever am I doing here,

in this familiar landmark

whether I should be tasting

caviar or sipping champagne

on a business flight to Europe.

 

yet familiarity is infectious

as I clutch onto landmarks that

have made my history,

recapture times images and

stop at the complex intersections

that mark the routes of my existence,

Make yesterday's promises bygones

and venture into a terminal

of bright realization that

I must go.

 

 

-- Parvathi Solomons Arasanayagam