Malinda Words: Michael Ondaatje

Some years ago I chanced upon the grave of Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, the English language poet whose iconic credentials draw from who was remarkably at odds with the political and ideological predilections of the English-speaking literati of his time and who in subject, style and metaphor was more a ‘Sinhala poet’ than most poets writing in that language. That chance discovery inspired an article titled ‘Mis-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha’ published in the now defunct ‘The Nation.’

A few weeks ago, Samod Porawagamage, an academic and a poet, asked me where Lakdasa’s grave was. I had a vague recollection of its location but told him that we would have to go look. A few days ago, I was at the Borella Kanatta and having an hour or so to wait for a funeral ceremony, decided to look for Lakdasa’s grave, just so I could tell Samod.

I couldn’t find it. Lakdasa’s final resting place must be there and one day I will re-discover it. Or not.

A couple of years ago, Lakdasa resurfaced or was resurrected by Aparna Halpe and Michael Ondaatje who put together a collection of his poetry. Award-winning Sinhala poet Sunanda Karunaratne has since taken on the task of translating the collection into Sinhala. He has already translated close to half the collection and it has been an invigorating experience to discuss each translation along with the original.

But walking among graveyards ‘looking’ for Lakdasa I was struck by the number of headstones with inscriptions totally obliterated by time and the elements. Maybe the near and dear who attended the burial and placed a headstone thereafter have passed on themselves. Maybe after a generation or two there was no one left on the island to visit, lay flowers and re-letter those blank pieces of stone or concrete. Maybe too much time has passed for anyone to remember the names of the particular ancestors.

It is unlikely that any of the dead were subjected to damnatio memoriae. It is not by official decree alone that people get ‘erased’ and forgotten. Anyway, it took me back to a day in January 1992: my maternal grandfather’s final rites before cremation.

I heard the Pali phrase anicca vata sankhara or ‘impernant, alsa, are all things,’ and not for the first time. I had already heard people say or seen the words ‘roopaya dirai, naamaya nodirai,’ meaning ‘the body perishes but not the name.’ And I remember seeing a photograph of someone who was probably my maternal great great grandfather and realising that I didn’t know his name. My maternal grandmother passed away in 2008, my mother in 2009, her brother in 2012 and her sister in 2025. Their remaining two sisters and brother might know the name of the person. I should ask. Eventually, though, the names will be forgotten.

Not all names are forgotten though. Historians keep names alive, but I can’t help but wonder if the persons associated with those names were anything like they are made out to be by historians, folklore and other exercises in what amounts to legend-making.

Who was Lakdasa and does the Lakdasa of those who remember him still, either on account of acquaintance or through his work, remain intact or does it change as the person remembering or reading changes? Probably the latter.

His poetry is intact though. For how long we don’t know. The final resting place of poets is a dusty bookshelf at the back of a used books store, I once wrote. Depending on the place a poet holds in the literary universe, some one might interject. True.

But then again, is it only the ‘great’ poets who have extended ‘shelf life,’ so to speak? Vihanga Perera, another academic and also an award-winning writer of both prose and verse, in a note on a poet rarely remembered or acknowledged as an important poetic voice ('The importance of the “Selected Poems” of Gamini Seneviratne to contemporary readership’), introduces as interesting term: ‘patronage of gatekeepers.’

It is not only time that fades memory. There are elements other than wind, fire, earth and water that are at work. Happens to history and happens to works of art, literature included. There’s politics at work. Deference to gatekeepers help. Ignoring them can cost.

Lakdasa’s poetry was in the Advanced Level English Literature syllabus back in the 1980s. It was in the English syllable of the University of Peradeniya in the mid-eighties. I am pretty sure students of English literature in Sri Lanka have heard of him or studied his work. But how many Sinhala and Tamil writers and students of Sinhala and Tamil literature in Sri Lanka know, I wonder. And, by the same token, how many people who do not know Sinhala or Tamil know of the great literary figures who wrote or write in those languages?

Does it matter, one may ask. Not really. Time passes. Things change. People forget. Of the over 7,000 languages spoken in the world I know just two. There are stories and songs, no doubt, in each and every one of the languages I do not know. My life would be so much richer did I have access to half a dozen of them, even in translation. It doesn’t mean that my life or those of others like me are worthless or less meaningful.

I couldn’t find Lakdasa’s grave. I have his poetry. Sunanda’s effort will give thousands of people access to Lakdasa’s poetry. They will read them as they will and they will resurrect a Lakdasa through that process. And it doesn’t really matter that the person they conjure thus is nothing like the Lakdasa who lived and wrote.

Last night, for reasons that had nothing to do with any of the above, I checked out some iconic scenes of the movie “Dead Poets’ Society.” As Mr Keating, the central character played by the late and inimitable Robin Williams, could have said it, ‘they are all food for worms’ or ‘are fertilising daffodils’. Well, they are all probably done feeding and fertilising.

Then again, watching those clips, I got to listen once again to the opening lines of the 17th century poem ‘To the virgins, to make much of time,’ by Robert Herrick. I didn’t know the title or the poet until last night. But those lines!

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

He’s gone. Herrick, I mean. He is alive though. So too Lakdasa. Even if I never revisit the Borella Kanatta again or I never find his grave, however many times I walk among those graves. He is not there anyway. Doesn’t really matter.

Lakdasa or Lakdhas Wikkramasinha? A collection of his poems edited by Aparna Halpe and Michael Ondaatje, published by New York Review Books (NYRB) and just recently released, has it as ‘Lakdhas.’ His gravestone insists, ‘Lakdasa.’ What is in a name, though? He wrote and what he wrote now writes him. Rewrites, inevitably. Re-rewritten if you toss in translation.

But where is Lakdasa? Where has he been all these years? Where is he now and where is he going?

Around 10 years ago I chanced upon his grave and was struck by what was inscribed on the gravestone: ‘Calm on the rock of age, above the roar of the tumultuous sea, came a voice, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, Lead on O Lord.’

He was drowned, and therefore the first part of it is apt. He was a rebel whose poetry turned things upside down (after all in ‘The Poet’ he advocates the tossing of bombs followed by note-taking), but in terms of contesting theology and formal religious structures he have never been more clear than in ‘Nossa Senhora Dos Chingalas’ (‘Our Lady of the Sinhalas’).

Blasphemous, some may say. It was, as I observed then, ‘[In terms of] lyrical finesse, emotional control, narrative ease, simplicity of metaphor, and for informed and astute political commentary this was Lakdasa at his best.’ He simply restored divining from creator-god to god-creator, one might say. This poem exemplifies the ‘political fearlessness’ observed in the NYRB blurb, but in the carefully crafted poetics

I concluded, ‘mis-residenced’ (in the Borella Kanatta), but then again, corporeal leftovers are beyond the reach and control of the dead; the living inscribe in accordance to the image of the departed they privilege. They could be right or wrong or somewhere between. [See 'Mis-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha']

What lives on is his poetry. In hearts and minds privileged to have read, in manuscripts lovingly typed by a friend and admirer, Ashley Halpe, later discovered by his daughter Aparna, in Advanced Level and university syllabuses, university libraries and collections of poetry-lovers and poets, has Lakdasa lived. Scattered like so much ash, like so much history, in fragment, pottery shards that recite the frustrating line, ‘there’s so much more.’

That ‘so much more,’ is what Aparna and Michael have put together. They have brought together the fragmented and scattered poet, dusted off neglect and ignorance, reconstructed and re-residenced him. Resurrected, yes, in ways consistent with ‘Nossa Senhora Dos Chingalas.’

Importantly, the collection includes some of his Sinhala poems. I’ve read somewhere that towards the end of his life Lakdasa had believed that writing in English constituted some kind of cultural treason. There was as much ‘Sinhala’ and ‘Sinhala culture’ in his English poetry as there is in the few Sinhala ones he has written though. Cultural treason can manifest itself in many ways. There can theoretically be treachery expressed in Sinhala that is as pernicious as that which is in English. We could go into that, but this is not the moment.

What Aparna and Michael have done is to relocate Lakdasa in the here and now of contemporary Sri Lanka and contemporary Sri Lankan literature, especially contemporary Sri Lankan English literature. It is in many ways an insurgent venture on their part.

Hiniduma Sunil Senavi, during the launch of Chulananda Samaranayake’s ‘දැහැමිද මේ දිවයින’ (‘Daehaemida Me Divayina’ or ‘Is this Island virtuous?’) and ‘Glimpses of a Shattered Island’ five years ago, spoke about ‘language-relatives,’ i.e. English and Sinhala: ‘The English Poet is a relative that the Sinhala Poet does not converse with.’ Interesting enough to comment, so I did:

‘It’s probably a language issue. Two relatives living in different continents, separated by seas or mountains or rivers, let’s say. We could put it all down to the ‘language policy,’ that easy alibi for incompetence, ignorance and sloth, but then again we must not forget that such ‘islands’ existed even before 1956. We can quibble about how it happened or when but we can agree that the estrangement exists. There’s something that Sunil Senevi did not say, perhaps because the audience was ‘Sinhala’ and not ‘English’: The English Poet or rather the English Poetic Circle not only does not talk to the Sinhala Poet, but is by and large ignorant of the latter’s existence or, worse, even if aware is somehow dismissive, not account of quality-lack but some other malady. And we are all the poorer for it. And we could say the same of the relationships or lack thereof between Sinhala poets and Tamil poets, and also English Poets and Tamil poets.’

Aparna and Michael have dedicated the book to the GotaGoGama Library.She wants to believe that Lakdhas would have approved of that. ‘GGG Library’ certainly was one of the more endearing products of last year’s protests. She is probably right; Lakdasa would have identified with it, although he lived in a different time and agitation had different colours, textures and, let’s not forget, substance.

Lakdasa’s poetry should be translated into Sinhala. All of it. Sunanda Karunaratne and Liyanage Amarakeerthi I believe are the best suited for such an exercise. Now that we have this collection, perhaps one of them or both or someone else may attempt this. That, now, would be radical and Lakdasa would have certainly approved of it.

For now, this is good. Aparna and Michael have done something amazing. It is an invaluable contribution to Sri Lankan literature and would hopefully inform, nuance and glaze political engagement in positive ways for a long time to come. They have re-residenced Lakdasa. Or Lakdhas. And now we can contemplate our own respective residences. And residencies. Literary or otherwise.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

13 August 2026

Looking for and missing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

27 July 2023

Re-‘residencing’ Lakdasa Wikkramasinha