Poets and their visions 25 – Yeats

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A Prayer for my Daughter, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lake Isle of Innisfree, Leda and the Swan, poems, Poetry, Robert Browning, Sailing to Byzantium, T S Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Wild Swans at Coole, Yeats

As with Tennyson and Browning, Eliot and Yeats were long considered a pair of poets who best represented their age. As with Browning, Yeats now is considered far less important than his more enduring contemporary. This judgment is largely true, but nevertheless Yeats like Browning was a considerable writer and well deserves to be read even now.

Though more orthodox than Eliot in style and subject matter, Yeats too had a wide range. Yet many of his best poems deal with the subject of age and transition. The beautiful Wild Swans at Coole exemplifies the manner in which he transits from scenic description to cognizance of the years passing.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Mirrored Images – 16

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ANOMA RAJAKARUNA, Buddhini Ramanayaka, Fire Churning from Within, FTZ Girls, PANNAAMATHTHUK KAVIRAAYAR, poems, Poetry, S Sivasegaram, To My Son His Inheritance, Wickramasena Jayasekera

ANOMA RAJAKARUNA

 

FTZ Girls

 

Factories wherever you go

Girls wherever you look

Machines and equipment

For buttons and collars

 

Vacancies galore but no vacations

Sustaining the nation’s economy on twelve hour shifts

Demand and supply causing headaches and vomit

The Board meets, the girls fall ill

 

The chairman lives abroad, the girls in cardboard shelters

Standing in queues for private buses as the Intercoolers pass

 

So the foreign exchange comes

From the UN and the UK and Japan

For the work through days and nights

In Katunayaka, Biyagama, Koggala

 

The Quota Target Shipment is achieved

By independent healthy voluntary labour

Or perhaps not

 

World famous brands produced by girls also branded

Girls – females – youngsters – sluts

Our girls

 

Translated by Buddhini Ramanayaka

A bridge across languages

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Bridging Connections, British Council, Cheran, Jean Arasanayagam, Michael Ondaatje, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, National Book Trust, National Book Trust of India, poems, Poetry, Richard de Zoysa, The English Patient, The Graetian Prize, The Hindu

“Mirrored Images” focuses on Sri Lankan poetry written since 1948, in Sinhala, Tamil and English

In 2007, the National Book Trust brought out “Bridging Connections”, an anthology of Sri Lankan short stories edited by Rajiva Wijesinha, a member of the Sri Lankan Parliament, and a distinguished writer and academic.

Spurred by its success, they considered bringing out a companion anthology of Sri Lankan poetry. After hesitating initially, Wijesinha agreed to edit this volume as well. Launched recently in the Capital, “Mirrored Images” contains selections from English poetry as also translations from Sinhala and Tamil poetry into English. It includes works by some of the island country’s most respected poets, such as Cheran, Jean Arasanayagam, Richard Zoysa, among several others.

Poets and their visions 10 – Swinburne

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Algernon Charles Swinburne, Atalanta, Edmund Wilson, Garden of Proserpine, Harold Bloom, Itylus, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, Oscar Wilde, poems, Poetry, Sappho, T S Eliot, Thomas Stearns Eliot

Swinburne might not seem an obvious choice to be included in a collection of significant poets. Harold Bloom does treat him as one of his hundred exemplars of Genius, but notes that he is ‘now the most unfashionable’ of all those he discusses in his book. He was certainly not considered a poet of consequence when I was growing up, in the middle of the last century, having been, as Bloom puts it. ‘slain by T S Eliot and Edmund Wilson, both distinguished hatchet men’.

Swinburne’s extinction in the last century is understandable. His manipulation of language was brilliant, but this led to the impression that he did not really bother too much about substance. Then, his private life was easily criticized, given that he was an unashamed masochist – though Oscar Wilde suggested that he deliberately exaggerated other elements, characterizing him as ‘a braggart in matters of vice, who had done everything he could to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality without being in the slightest degree a homosexual or a bestialiser’.

Poets and their visions 9 – Edward Fitzgerald and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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Book of Pots, Edward Fitzgerald, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, Omar Khayyam, poems, Poetry, Rubaiyat

I had not initially thought of including Edward Fitzgerald in this series, since he is renowned for only a single work, and that too a translation. But it was a translation that was enormously influential, not only in making the British reader aware of the poetry of another country, but also in propagating a vision of the world that was quite different from the staid conformity we associate with Victorian Britain.

I have stressed the other country, because I believe the way in which Britain configured the world in the 19^th century is of political as well as sociological interest. That was the time in which the process of othering,  of setting up dichotomies, was given free rein. In South Asia it led to the assertion of a distinction between Aryans and Dravidians, setting up distinctions of race with regard to what might at best have been linguistic divisions. And with regard to the Muslims, it claimed that there were Aryans, as represented by the good old Persians, in contrast with Semites – Arabs lumped together with the Jews in a somewhat inferior category that the West now forgets it propagated – and also what were termed Hamites.

This is not the place to go into detail about the extraordinary distinctions Europe perpetrated in its disjunctive view of the world, but I should note in passing how this preposterous analysis is said to have contributed too to the supposedly scientific differentiation between Tutsi and Hutu that contributed to the Rwandan genocide. Here I should note only the privileging of Persian culture that Britons like Fitzgerald engaged in during the 19^th century which also contributed to the characterization of the Turks as an upstart race. Turkey was still then the Sick Man of Europe, and from a British perspective it made sense to create a very different type of Muslim who was a sort of younger brother, Aryan and really almost Christian – as in a very different way, when the United States was deeply anti Iranian and thought Saddam Hussein a good thing, I heard supposedly erudite academics (when I was lecturing on the Semester at Sea programme of the University of Pittsburgh) distinguishing between fanatic Shiites and more balanced Sunnis.

Mirrored Images – 15

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A T Dharmapriya, Impressions of a Soldier, IVOR JANSZ, Karunakaran, poems, Poetry, S Pathmanathan, Silhouette, The Personnel Manager’s Conscience, YAMUNA MALINI PERERA

YAMUNA MALINI PERERA

 

The Personnel Manager’s Conscience

 

When I was traveling in my Lancer

lulled, in a traffic block

it’s not that I didn’t see

your faces at every bus halt.

Being covered all round

with black tinted glass

you could not see my face

in the car

 

But I could see yours

bent treble

in crowded buses

squeezing, pushing, sandwiched

all the way

 

I saw each one of you

the lip-stick coated, eye-lash painted

Suranganie

the simple plainly attired

Tharanganie

silently standing at the bus-stops

the ‘red-line’ threatening

every face

arriving at office

 

In my celestial carriage

Arriving before any one of you

It’s I who have to draw

the red-line sadly

screaming at everyone

who arrives late

 

In the shelter of

the air conditioned glass cubicle

I threw my conscience

in the ash-tray

my conscience that would

never fit with

the bureaucrat’s plane

that is mine

 

Translated by A T Dharmapriya

Mirrored Images – 14

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1983, A J Canagaratna, A Prosperous Spring, A. JESURASA, Big Match, In Memory of the Anonymous Dead, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, poems, Poetry, SUNANDA MAHENDRA, Yasmine Gooneratne

SUNANDA MAHENDRA

 

A Prosperous Spring

 

This is the winter’s end when days pass ever so slow

the new grass and the tender leaves yet to open their eyes.

Gentle rains blending with the softest snow

fall intermittently on the earth.

This is the end of winter which enlivens

this London park.

 

Like smoke balls

dark patches

linger in the blue skies

giant, gaunt trees sans leaves

with linear patterns on them

soothe the spirit when you watch.

 

Not stopping to see

I walk across the park.

 

It’s said spring will dawn in a few days time

this time it’s going to be a prosperous one

they say

I feel lonely and cannot abide the time.

Do come and join me my love

 

they say this time it’s going to be

a prosperous spring

 

Sharp, green tender shoots burst forth

splitting the trees

heads slightly raised.

Is it the spring for which they yearn?

The groves amidst the park, do they too await the spring?

This time round, will it be

a prosperous spring?

Mirrored Images – 13

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A Night in Frankfurt, BASIL FERNANDO, Batticaloa, Grab it Daughter if You Can, Jaffna, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, poems, Poetry, S Rajasingham, THILAKARATNA KURUVITA BANDARA, V I S Jayapalan, Yet Another Incident in July 1983

THILAKARATNA KURUVITA BANDARA

 

Grab it Daughter if You Can

 

There it is

grab it daughter if you can!

 

We who live in a box house

can find shelter in a flat

 

Open the golden door

and help us

to leave this ‘inheritance’ –

this line-house at Dematagoda.*

 

To bring up

your eight brothers and sisters

and to quicken our Susila’s marriage,

 

Please daughter

think of these things a bit!

We gave you all

all the wealth we possessed

your peerless beauty

the uncertain future

of a fatherless brood

the destitute future

of a fatherless brood

 

Please daughter

think of these

with your still tender head

you’re our distant star of hope

 

Please daughter

be devoted to that child

 

Please daughter

think of us too

who are helpless

 

You’re the sun that fights

For our dark lives

You’re the moon that lights

our dark lives.

 

Translated by A T Dharmapriya

 

Mirrored Images – 12

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A T Dharmapriya, A. IQBAL, Martyrs, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, Parakrama Kodituwakku, Patrick Fernando, poems, Poetry, S Sivasegar, The Fisherman Mourned by His Wife, The Sun Tarry a While

PARAKRAMA KODITUWAKKU

 

The Sun Tarry a While

 

Father is still at work…..

I, starting to pant early

am resting my head

on a clump of grass

in the chena

watching the distance far away.

 

Like small silver blades

the grass blades sprout.

A red ant wanders

along my shirt sleeve.

A song drops down

from open bird-beaks.

Pods of flowers leap up

splitting the earth’s skin.

 

Sacrificing its yellow yolk

the sun comes closer

 

Please stay awhile, sun

says my mind like a child

stay awhile, you, the sun!

 

The roads are only half done

only a little is written

in my letters

just one half the song is sung

the journey is not over yet.

It’s a long long way to go!

The flowers are yet to bloom fully

grant more time to put the house roof on

a lot more there is to learn.

You sun, please tarry awhile.

 

Translated by A T Dharmapriya

Mirrored Images – 11

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Boys, Kanchana Damodaran, LIYANAGE AMARAKEERTHI, NATCHATHIRAN CHEVVINDHIYAN, Shell Shocked, We are Women…, Wilhelm Ephraums, WIPULI HETTIARACCHI

WIPULI HETTIARACCHI

 

We are Women…

 

‘Anyone home…?’

Housecoat buttoned quickly up

over the night dress

the voice hardly able to reply

 

‘Is there anybody here..?’

 

They have come on a task assigned

 

Still half asleep

Mother struggles to find words and

to prevent her face and body freezing

I switch on lights from room to room

 

To ensure safety in the town

they search a house that has

no visitors or lodgers, not even a dog

 

‘Where are the men of the house?’

 

Sniffing even at our minds

that have harmed not even an ant

they look around with suspicion

 

‘Only both of you?’

 

On other days my mother would lie

that her husband would return soon

and her son was at work

but her wits that always found the right word

for the right time and place

were not working today.

 

In front of a crowd of men

wearing uniforms and stars

with guns in their hands

I scream

 

‘Yes. Who else?

We are the men

Who have survived in this home.’

 

Translated by Liyanage Amarakeerthi