Kapila Kumara Kalinga's cloud-fascination

 

The sky is the closest we can get to the notion of infinity, one may argue. The sense of vastness it exudes is, simply, out of this world. One can think of the number of astral entities or rather their innumerability, for instance. Break it down to particles and it would be of the out-of-your-mind kind.

When I think of sky and vastness, I always remember something my friend Kanishka Goonewardena observed one evening when I pointed out some cloud formation above the WUS Canteen of Peradeniya University. We were standing near the parapet wall outside the Arts Theatre. He simply said, ‘infinite poetry.’

I’ve mentioned that moment a few times over the years. Today it came to me when I wasn’t really looking up at the sky. I was in fact looking in the opposite direction, flipping the pages of a slim volume of poetry, ‘Siyapathaka raendi kavi,’ by Kapila Kumara Kalinga.

Siyapatha, literally ‘one hundred petals,’ refers to the lotus. One tends to think of dew drops or raindrops lingering on the petals, not poetry, but the title of Kapila’s collection is insistent; [it’s] poetry upon the lotus (petals).’

It’s his second collection of short verses. Indeed, the second collection of a hundred short poems.  The first was called ‘Keti vunath me kavi…’ (Brief though these verses…). More than two years ago, reflecting on that collection, I observed the following:

‘It is as though he has decided to meticulously affirm the economic signature of poetry. They are brief and yes they are long. “Long,” as in deep. They stop you. They make you think. They may even persuade you to reconsider the order of the universe and abandon received truths.’

Today I am thinking more about the order of the universe. Dimensional illusions. The collapse of clouds, their relocation in different forms on mountain, valley, leaf, petal, thought, heart and a manuscript. Clouds, in particular.

The second collection has a few ‘cloud poems,’ transliterated into English and referred to below.  They aren’t connected. Disparate clouds, really.  

Evening clouds
move away sated 
having kissed
mountain breasts

Kapila notices. Kapila transcribes as he sees and at his will, his poetic fingers gathering elements beyond reach and too gigantic for the arms to embrace. And thus does he transcribe the poetry of the sky, verses that have momentarily taken cloud form.


White clouds in the sky;
upon mountain range
black shadows

Who notices such things? Having read the above, I wonder what he noticed first, the cloud or the shadow. The sequence matters. Many have heard and used the phrase John Milton coined in ‘Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle’ — ‘every [dark] cloud has a silver lining.’ It could be but is not flipped, though. ‘Every silver lining [marks] a dark cloud.’

It’s cloud-verse (and also mountain-verse) transcribed, nevertheless.

Come right now
before it rains,
the sky tells the kite.

Delay, Kapila implies, would dissolve both cloud and kite. It’s not about clouds, kites or rain, of course. And that’s why it’s poetic. Kapila uses elements, especially clouds, to describe and (mildly) philosophise everyday moments so common that we hardly notice and certainly don’t render into poetry.

In a lonely desert
even a single cloud
is a companion

Clutching at straws? Desperation? Could be many things. Cloud, then, is an interpreter, a companion on a poetic journey that is necessarily solitary.

Under the shade
of a slow-moving cloud
an old bird
flaps its wings

The elderly must adapt and they do, Kapila notices. It’s hard to think of a more pithy way to encapsulate aging. It’s just a few lines, but it is the introduction to a biography or an afterword to a story about a life lived with vigour perhaps.

Re-reading the cloud poems, and reflecting ‘long’ on the brevity and imagination of the poet, I return to the apparent order of the universe and received truths. Cloud is cloud, yes, but cloud is so many other things as well. It’s a principle that can be applied to other things. Mountains, for example. Dewdrops, rain, grains of sand, a bird’s wing and other tangible things, each and every one of them a metaphor with multiple applications.

Clouds are intangible in a sense, but they are at least visible. Unlike solitude or heartache, for example. Unlike hope. Tyranny. The consecration of liars and thugs, the choreographed celebration of mediocrity, and the dismissal of objection with ridicule, teargas, baton or bullet. The incarceration of dignity. The twisting of tenses and timelines. Infinite are the applications. Infinite is the poetry resident in cloud formation. Uncountable are the drops of rain.

A feather fallen from the sky
a new journey begins
upon the waters of a river.

Kapila Kumara Kalinga doesn’t collect feathers or kites. He merely observes much of that which is seen but goes unnoticed. Their movements and occasional stillness he records. Almost surreptitiously. Like a cleverly camouflaged secret agent. It is as though he is filing reports for the eyes of the authorities in language so beautifully innocent that they are then immediately declassified. It’s as though they have a column title, ‘love,’ but can nevertheless be read as ‘rebellion.’ Or something else. Or anything else.  To each according to his or her fancy (of the moment).

Clouds get configured and reconfigured. Then they collapse or dissolve. They disappear. But they remain for all that happens is reinvention. Kapila Kumara Kalinga notes. Records.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']