Sri Lanka

February 4 is Sri Lanka's national day, marking the anniversary of their independence from the UK in 1948, when the country was known as the Commonwealth of Ceylon. The name change to Sri Lanka came in 1972. Since 1983 there's been on-again-off-again civil war in Sri Lanka, as the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka.

I was hoping I would be able to start off this project with some contemporary Sinhalese poetry in translation, but I've had trouble tracking any down in the past few days. I've found verse from previously centuries, and fragments of poems. I'm hoping to find some thing later to add to this post (suggestions would be wonderful) but in the mean time, I have Michael Ondaatje's poem "House on a Red Cliff," which the wonderful Dia Center for the Arts had on it's website. Ondaatje, though largely known as a Canadian writer, was born in Sri Lanka, and has written wonderfully about the country in poems, memoirs and fiction.


HOUSE ON A RED CLIFF

There is no mirror in Mirissa

the sea is in the leaves
the waves are in the palms

old languages in the arms
of the casuarina pine
parampara

parampara, from
generation to generation

The flamboyant a grandfather planted
having lived through fire
lifts itself over the roof

unframed

the house an open net

where the night concentrates
on a breath
on a step
a thing or gesture
we cannot be attached to

The long, the short, the difficult minutes
of night

where even in darkness
there is no horizon without a tree

just a boat's light in the leaves

Last footstep before formlessness


Michael Ondaatje
from Handwriting
Knopf 1999