Notes for a ballad titled 'John Hennessy's Balcony'

  

From John Hennessy’s balcony, one can see mornings bathed in pale blue and pink. Come evening and it is crimson that paints the sky. Not always, of course, for landscapes commune with seasons and weather can willy nilly wreck or repaint. One thing is assured: John Hennessy’s balcony is a place to feast one’s eyes and that prompts the mind to meditate on the eternal verities.

John Henessy has Irish and Sicilian blood. How much of each I do not know and neither does he. Not in the sense of cultural trace in ways of being. He was born and raised in New Jersey, USA. He is a citizen of the USA. That’s stamped on his passport and probably elsewhere too. I think he is also from Sri Lanka, even though he doesn’t have dual citizenship.

 John Hennessy after finishing high school, thought of applying to Amherst College. He didn’t because the school, in its application form, had wanted to know if John had relatives who had attended Amherst. I applied too, but my application was rejected. We were brothers then. We were what Amherst missed. Sadly or thankfully! In fact, two years ago, John and I visited the school and took a photograph to commemorate the momentous occasion!

 

John attended Princeton and later completed a Masters in Fine Arts, I think in some university in Texas. Ironically, he now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Ironically but happily nevertheless it’s where I had the best conversations with John. 

I have not had the privilege of absorbing that particular slice of Amherst’s pastoral outskirts in all months or all four seasons. My visits were in early and late Fall, the first in 2023 and the next and last the following year. John sends me pictures though. And in this way, admittedly limited, I’ve revisited John Hennessy’s balcony many times.  

 There are horses beyond the road that lies below the apartment complex where John lives. I’ve seen them being trained. For what, I do not know. There’s a lumber yard beyond; I don’t know which forests are being cut down though. There’s cattle. They move from one end of the field to the other. And back. I have not monitored their movement though.

There are hills too. They get coloured and recoloured by sun, cloud, precipitation and time of day. They turn grey after sunset and jet black not too long afterwards. They almost disappear into the night. Moonlight and even starlight ensure that their presence is evident nevertheless.

John Hennessy’s balcony is made for quiet times. It hosts stimulating conversations too. Tea and coffee are welcome. Wine too, depending on time of day and mood. Crackers and cheese. Fruit too. It is also a place to read a book, write notes or poetry and, in John’s case, grade papers of undergraduates and graduate students.

News of the day, John’s in particular, is best ‘read’ in John Hennessy’s balcony, I’ve found. It is a good place for post mortems too. Children, parenting, love, relationships, horrors of the world, tyranny of the sophomoric, and the courage in the midst of hopelessness find the balcony to be the most comfortable place in John Hennessey’s apartment.

I think it was when we were passing a particular house that John told me about a move to change the town’s name from Amherst to Emily. Amherst was named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, a British general who has the unenviable reputation of an expressed desire to spread smallpox among Native Americans during the Pontiac’s War. Emily was the alternative proposed since it was the birthplace and home of the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson. The house was where she lived and is now a museum. John mentioned this in passing, literally. I can’t remember returning to the subject but I do know that sitting in John Hennessy’s balcony, I wondered on more than one occasion of Amherst, Dickinson, what is, what could or ought to have been and what may one day be. There, in that corner of an America unknown to and probably unrecognisable by Walt Whitman, another poet celebrated in and beyond the USA, and in other parts of the planet, especially in Gaza, Occupied Palestine.

John, like anyone of our age (we were both born in 1965), has stories. Many. Here’s one. On one occasion, John was taunted by an ill-tempered, ignorant and arrogant restaurant owner. A man who would rather walk away from unpleasantness and conflict even if it costs him dearly, John decided to leave. However, it was one of those rare occasions when one feels like doing the 180-degree turn. In this case, literally. John stormed back and re-confronted the uncouth restaurateur.

‘I can read. And not only read, I am a poet!’

He is. John writes and also edits several poetry periodicals. He can tell good poetry from bad, and promising writers from the hopeless. This is why he is a good teacher, I think.

John speaks of his day. Of his students. Of their work. Of his classes. The innumerable frustrations that are somehow redeemed by that one student or one essay or poem or even a single line that he will not forget for years. Small but necessary rewards to keep a teacher in school, year after year, decade after decade, regardless of salary anomalies, intra-departmental noise and personal tragedy.

Such things we’ve spoken of sitting in John Hennessy’s balcony, as light and shadow, colour and the shapes of hills and creatures dip into our conversations without causing ripple or rupture.

As I write, it’s a little past midnight in Amherst. It’s early Fall. The leaves are probably starting to change colour, but even if they have it would be too dark to detail such things. There were snow flurries one morning when I visited John two years ago, but it’s too early in the year for that and the consequently magical transformation of the landscape. There would be the odd vehicle and in its lights one might catch the shape of a shed or a tree. It would be cool. John is probably fast asleep but I am not and would still be wide awake had I been there. I would be in John Hennessy’s balcony, with a cup of coffee, patiently waiting for physical weariness and mental composure to drive me to bed.

John Hennessey is probably fast asleep. There’s no one on the balcony right now. There’s the table. There are chairs. Unoccupied, but not for long.

There will soon be poetry and conversation, coffee or wine, pained expressions and loud laughter. Touched by pastel shades and love. That’s John Hennessy’s balcony. A ballad that will hopefully get written. 

 

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

 

 

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Amherst: silent, rural, poetic and serendipitous

I’ve spent the past few days in Amherst, Massachusetts, with my friend, the poet John Hennessy. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and lives a few miles away from the campus.

‘A few miles away’ makes it quite rural. From the balcony of his second floor apartment one can see dozens of cows grazing in the meadows across the road. Beyond the farmland there are hills covered by forest. On certain dawns, even in late October, the sunrise is spectacular; bright red streaks caressing the crest of the hills. Sometimes it is dismal; rain clouds seamlessly dripping into a curtain of mist. This morning I woke up to find it was snowing. Wet snow. Unusual for late October in these days of climate change, John said, although it would have been ‘normal’ ten years ago.

The mist lifts as the day proceeds, detailing the landscape, a less than vibrant cocktail of fall colours, the green of the meadow, black forms of the cows with their heads down, diligently scrolling, scrolling, scrolling the dew-laden grass, black ribbon of the road, cattle sheds and a single house, yes, the only one that can be seen from John’s balcony.

The first time I heard of Amherst was more than 30 years ago. Amherst College, to be exact; back then I hadn’t heard of ‘UMass, Amherst.’ Amherst College was one of two schools I applied to as an undergraduate seeking to transfer from the University of Peradeniya which, like all universities in Sri Lanka at the time, was closed — I had completed just one academic year in three calendar years.  

Amherst rejected me and I received the notification after I had already arrived at the other school. John, interestingly, had rejected Amherst when he was applying to colleges. That’s a story for John’s memoirs, but we are planning to go there and take a picture. We could caption it as ‘What Amherst College missed’ or ‘What we missed,’ but right now we are tending towards the former.

He took me to Book Mill, a quaint bookshop with a cosy cafe by a stream, showed me Emily Dickinson’s house which is now a museum and dropped me off at the W E B Du Bois Library where I read some quotes accompanying photographs of the great man. ‘The irony of it all,’ I told myself. About Du Bois’ quotes, I mean.

Obviously I cannot blurb a university (UMass) that was established in 1863 or a college (Amherst College) founded in 1821 and certainly not a town, the history of whose name goes back to 1759. I can tell an Amherst - Sri Lanka story though.

John the Poet, as my sister refers to him, lives in a small house unbelievably rich in poetry. In each of the few days I’ve been here John has received at least two books of poetry, usually periodicals which he has contributed to as poet, translator or editor. John has countless stories about poets and poetry. ’John Hennessy, poets and poetry,’ is an article I will never be able to write, though.

However there is one book, an anthology, that I must mention: ‘Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala & English Poetry from Sri Lanka and its Diaspora.’ I am among several dozens of poets featured in the collection and John wanted me to sign it. I opened the book to a random page.  It was a poem by my favourite contemporary Sinhala poet, Ruwan Bandujeewa, translated by Chamini Kulathunga.

That name! I first met Chamini when she was still an undergraduate at the University of Colombo. She was interested in literary translation, especially the work of Mahagama Sekera. Chamini left Sri Lanka to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa. I hadn’t seen her in over five years. So I texted her, asking how she was and informing her that I was in the USA, in Amherst to be exact.

‘I’m in Amherst as well.’

So we met at the Du Bois library (outside which John had dropped me). Talked. And later we went out with John the Poet and his son, Nick the Playwright. The conversation was a walk among poets, poetry, script-writing, theatre productions and academic life. Quite a place for serendipity Amherst is, I thought to myself.

Now it’s past midnight here. I can make out the hills far away. There’s mist in the valley, I notice. One streetlamp drops a circle of light on the road. Amherst is silent. Rural. Poetic. Lovely to visit.

John and I at Amherst College (finally!)

['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 the 259th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

malindadocs@gmail.com

Other articles in this series: 

The virtues of unemployability

A breathless hush at the close

Ahmed Issa, fearless and audacious in Gaza

Let us take a deep breath now...

How Grolier Poetry writes 'Harvard Square'

Let us write beautiful poetry

Following children and their smiles

Let's plant words in cracks and craters

Re-weaving lives and love

When the earth closes upon us...

Let us now march to the battleground of words

The most pernicious human shield

Who bombed Frankfurter Buchmesse

The truly besieged 

Love's austere and lonely offices

The mysteriously enjoined in the middle of nowhere

Serendipity now!

Reflections on the unimaginable 

Jackson Anthony is a book and will be read 

A village called Narberth Bookshop

Gateway drugs to A-B-C

'Irvin' and other one-word poems

Earth pieces Kerala and Sri Lanka

Obligation as bomb and ocean

In the land of insomnial poets

In and out of shadows

Over to Eve

When you don't need an invitation, it's home

When the Canadian House of Commons applauded a Nazi...

Touching the touch-me-nots

The importance of not skipping steps

No free passes to the Land of Integrity

Hector Kobbekaduwa is not a building, statue, street or stamp

Rajagala and the Parable of the Panner

Let's show love to Starbucks employees!

You've got mail?

Octavio Paz and Arthur C Clarke in the stratosphere 

Enduring solidarities 

Coco 'Quotes' Gauff!

9/11 and the calm metal instrument of Salvador Allende's voice 

What a memory-keeper foregoes 

Whitman, Neruda and things that wait in all things

Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch

Those made of love will fly

Profit: the peragamankaru of major wars

Helplessness and innocence

The parameters of entirety

In loving memory of Carrie Lee (1956-2020)

Mobsters on and off the screen

Transfixing and freeing dawns

We're here because we're here because we're here

Life signatures

Sha'Carri Richardson versus and with Sha'Carri Richardson  

A canvas for a mind-brush

Sybil Wettasinghe's shoes

Love is...

A stroll with Pragg and Arjun along a boulevard in Baku

Meditation on tree-art

Daya Sahabandu ran out of partners but must have smiled to the end

Gentle intrusions 

Sleeping well

The unleashing of inspiration

Write, for Pete's sake

Autumn Leaves Safeness

 Sapan and voices that erase borders

Problem elephants and problem humans

Songs from the vaekanda

The 'inhuman' elephant in a human zoo

Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's efforts to align meaning

Arwa Turra, heart-stitcher

Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home

True national anthems

Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)

A gateway to illumination in West Virginia

Through strange fissures into magical orchards

There's sea glass love few will see 

Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse

The responsible will not be broken

Home worlds

Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon

Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?

Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing

History is new(s)

Journalism inadvertently learned

Reflections on the young poetic heart

Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus

The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'

Subverting the indecency of the mind

Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'

Innocence

A degree in people

Faces dripping with time

Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter

Revolutionary unburdening

Seeing, unseeing and seeing again

Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy

The Edelweiss of Mirissa 

The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga 

The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down) 

Every mountain, every rock, is sacred 

Manufacturing passivity and obedience 

Precept and practice 

Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited 

In praise of courage, determination and insanity 

The relative values of life and death 

Feet that walk 

Sarinda's eyes 

Poetry and poets will not be buried 

Sunny Dayananda 

Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990) 

What makes Oxygen breathable?  

Sorrowing and delighting the world 

The greatest fallacy  

Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi 

Beyond praise and blame 

Letters that cut and heal the heart 

Vanished and vanishing trails 

Blue-blueness 

A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya 

The soft rain of neighbourliness  

The Gold Medals of being 

Jaya Sri Ratna Sri 

All those we've loved before 

Reflections on waves and markings 

A chorus of National Anthems 

Saying what and how 

'Say when' 

Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra 

The loves of our lives 

The right time, the right person 

The silent equivalent of a thousand words 

Crazy cousins are besties for life 

Unities, free and endearing 

Free verse and the return key

"Sorry, Earth!" 

The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis 

The revolution is the song 

Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins 

The day I won a Pulitzer 

Ko? 

Ella Deloria's silences 

Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness 

Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable  

Thursday! 

Deveni: a priceless one-word koan 

Enlightening geometries 

Let's meet at 'The Commons' 

It all begins with a dot 

Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation 

'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone 

On sweeping close to one's feet 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

To be an island like the Roberts... 

Debts that can never be repaid in full

An island which no flood can overwhelm 

Who really wrote 'Mother'? 

A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing 

Heart dances that cannot be choreographed 

Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember 

On loving, always 

Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal 

When you turn 80... 

It is good to be conscious of nudities  

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday  

There's a one in a million and a one in ten 

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California 

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature 

Pathways missed 

Architectures of the demolished 

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts 

Who the heck do you think I am? 

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha' 

The Mangala Sabhava 

So how are things in Sri Lanka? 

The most beautiful father 

Palmam qui meruit ferat 

The sweetest three-letter poem 

Buddhangala Kamatahan 

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello 

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership 

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked 

Pure-Rathna, a class act 

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna 

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other 

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles 

Matters of honor and dignity 

Yet another Mother's Day 

A cockroach named 'Don't' 

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth 

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara 

Sweeping the clutter away 

Some play music, others listen 

Completing unfinished texts 

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn 

I am at Jaga Food, where are you? 

On separating the missing from the disappeared 

Moments without tenses 

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have) 

The world is made of waves 

'Sentinelity' 

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller 

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya' 

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist 

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses 

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced 

Some stories are written on the covers themselves 

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature 

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time  

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie 

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists? 

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords 

The books of disquiet 

A song of terraced paddy fields 

Of ants, bridges and possibilities 

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva  

World's End 

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse 

Street corner stories 

Who did not listen, who's not listening still? 

The book of layering 

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain 

The world is made for re-colouring 

The gift and yoke of bastardy 

The 'English Smile' 

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5 

Visual cartographers and cartography 

Ithaca from a long ago and right now 

Lessons written in invisible ink 

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness' 

A tea-maker story seldom told 

On academic activism 

The interchangeability of light and darkness 

Back to TRADITIONAL rice 

Sisterhood: moments, just moments 

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging 

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha 

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows 

Sirith, like pirith, persist 

Fragrances that will not be bottled  

Colours and textures of living heritage 

Countries of the past, present and future 

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched 

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains 

The ways of the lotus 

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace 

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville 

Live and tell the tale as you will 

Between struggle and cooperation 

Of love and other intangibles 

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions 

The universe of smallness 

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers 

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills 

Serendipitous amber rules the world 

Continents of the heart

  

The allegory of the slow road

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