to aj
aj, does it seem strange,
that i would write this to you,
about you, how you could survive
the gun man’s revenge and die
in a hospital bed, rest in peace
in mortality.
one sudden moment, i see you at my side,
on the long stone corridor of the arts
faculty, off to a wedding i was
uninvited to; and you bring back
a piece of the pie, the wedding cake,
a peace offering for the lost years, for
old times’ sake, the curfew hours, the
soft muffled tones, circling
our literary talk on those
lamp lit nights on the porch.
the stillness of those heady days of long laughing nights
and full throated cry of the nation’s longing,
when jaffna woke up from its slumber
into a murderous rampage of kith and kin,
friend and foe. the tear stricken face;
the umbilical cord, ripped, comes
apart, bloody, in our hands;
you sat on the side lines
a trickster figure almost, like in a painting,
tiny and smiling, suggesting silence.
i am writing
only of death these bomb-filled days,
of the dying and our undoing, and it
seems fitting
that i should write about
you, aj, for laughing at murder in its face.
there is nothing natural about death, or even
sunshine, alcohol and old age. there is nothing
natural about the quiet in the leaves on the
mango trees, the still night broken
by the dog barking in endless fear; there is
nothing natural about natural death,
frightening us with normality
that cannot be, dropped
into the nothingness,
the severance of our waking days.
S.Sumathy
