No spectators at chasm’s door

Carl August Sandburg, the American (of the United States) poet, biographer, journalist and winner of three Pulitzer Prizes (two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln) wrote a book-length poem celebrating resilience, wit and the democratic spirit of ordinary fellow-citizens during the Great Depression. The book, titled ‘The people, yes,’ has the following line: ‘suppose they gave a war and nobody came.’ It would become a famous anti-war slogan during the protests against one of the many wars that ought to have been called ‘American (of the United States) War’ or simply ‘US War’: on Vietnam.

Wars are seldom deserving of that interesting and disingenuous uttering of Lincoln in his much talked of Gettysburg Address, ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’ Wars are of course fought ‘by people,’ but rarely out of conviction. They are not ‘for the people.' Wars are about profit. About land theft. Control or seizure of resources (like oil). Securing markets.

It would be lovely if war was declared but no one came. I can’t think of an example of that happening. People do, at times, abandon wars, but typically only when warmongering leaders (kings, tzars and presidents) lose their grip on power. Happened in Russia. Could happen in the USA.

We are not there yet. I am talking about the raging US-Israel War on Iran, which is simultaneously a war on civilisation, international law and humanity. There are many ways to cut that bloody cake, but let’s offer a nutshell: ‘Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, both deranged and both representing countries whose history is all about land-theft, enslavement, genocide and war-waging, attacked Iran to a) destroy nuclear capabilities that they (Trump and Netanyahu) claimed they had eliminated less than a year ago, b) prevent Iran from bombing Isreal when Israel bombs Iran (!), and c) engineer regime change.’

Well, we might add, ‘to bring democracy to Iran’ and ‘emancipate Iranian women.’ Now laugh.

Now let’s be sober.  The two genocidal egomaniacs gave the entire world their middle fingers and brought us all to the edge of a precipice. A chasm. We can choose, here in Sri Lanka, to think ‘it’s all happening far away,’ except that we are not exactly an island in the global economic order. If that were not the case, we wouldn’t be worrying about oil reserves. There wouldn’t be rationing.

There is a chasm, whether we acknowledge it or not. And this is why I remembered Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, translated by Fady Joudah, from the volume, ‘The Butterfly’s Burden.’ It’s titled ‘I have a seat in an abandoned theatre.’ It’s structured as a conversation between two people in ‘an abandoned theatre in Beirut.’ Yes, Beirut. You can flip the metaphors any which way you like. And let's not forget that 'Beirut' is all over the Persian Gulf.

Darwish writes:
I have a seat in the abandoned theater
in Beirut. I might forget, and I might recall
the final act without longing ... not because of anything
other than that the play was not written
skillfully ...

The scripts played out in theatres of war are hardly ever written skillfully. In this instance, the script writers, Trump and Netanyahu, are incorrigible and illiterate. Well, they can read and write, so technically they are literate, but then again their grammar is awful and they simply cannot structure coherent sentences.

Anyway.

Darwish ends with the following exchange:

He says: No spectators at chasm’s door ... and no
one is neutral here. And you must choose
your part in the end
So I say: I’m missing the beginning, what’s the beginning?

The beginning is a library full of books on empires, empire building, enslavement, exploitation, slavery, profit, greed, deceit etc., etc. Worth a visit. But here, at the chasm, with two trigger-happy thugs with massive egos and unburdened of shame, there’s no place to hide, nowhere to run.

Darwish writes (in ‘The horse fell of the poem,’ again translated by Joudah):

There is no margin in modern language left
to celebrate what we love,
because all that will be ... was
 
Wait. Was?  Perhaps. Then again, there are no laws against re-writing, in re-creating a language where love can be celebrated and where that which was made to be ‘was’ can be recreated. There are no spectators at 'chasm’s door.' At 'chasms’s door,' we stand. We are both player and spectator. We know the lines and don’t need a prompt. We are playwright and producer. We handle lights and props.

This is a genre of theatre where we can speak out of turn, deconstruct narratives and with wit and wisdom make more robust our hearts and resolve. We can choose to breathe or submit to enforced asphyxiation. We can be silent and count the dead until we walk into or are buried in rubble as a statistic.

The privilege of being a spectator at chasm’s door has been withdrawn. Simply put, it’s ours to make sure that the poem doesn’t fall off the horse.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindadocs@gmail.com.

Read more

Let us write beautiful poetry

It was in early 1986 that I first encountered Ivan Shadr's bronze sculpture of 1927 titled 'The Cobblestone is a Weapon of the Proletariat.' It was on the front page of a newspaper whose name I cannot remember now.

Some unknown Trotskyite, either a student or a lecturer at the Dumbara Campus of the University of Peradeniya, must have subscribed to a periodical published by one of the many shards of the Fourth International. This was probably in early 1985. I can’t remember the name of the paper, but I remember picking it up a few days after it was placed in the letter board along with what were probably less political missives from loved ones to students.

There must have been a name on it, but not one that belonged to any student or lecturer as far as I could tell. No one ever claimed those newspapers so they were mine for all intents and purposes. I read them and was duly informed about what was happening in the world. Battles. Ideological debates. Informed and well argued articles about capitalism, imperialism and class struggle. Things conspicuously absent in mainstream newspapers. It was an integral part of my undergraduate education.

I found the sculpture and the caption intriguing. I remember cutting it out and pinning it to one of the notice boards where such things were put up.  

To me, at that age, it was all about ‘by any means necessary,’ although I didn’t think of those words which had been uttered by Malcolm X a couple of decades before. I knew enough to know about power differentials, especially with regard to the complement of weapons at the disposal of warring parties, especially when people take on the state or rather those who operate from the commanding heights of that preeminent coercive apparatus.  

Yes, we know that Shadr (Ivan Dmitriyevich Ivanov) became a full time propagandist and that revolutionary idealism was buried after Lenin died, in the name of the proletariat no less. That’s an aside though.

I’ve returned to cobblestones many times since then. I came to see them differently, This is why, almost twenty years later, I asked the following question: ‘Did you know that pavement stones are agitating to be turned into poetry that can be flung at the oppressor?’

And this afternoon, I found that some cobblestones had indeed been transformed into a poetic avatar. Around 50 people were standing at a street corner, protesting the attacks on Gaza. There was an old lady who said she came out whenever she could. She was holding a placard with the following legend attributed to Raji Sourani, a human rights lawyer in Gaza: ‘Like the olive trees we are here.’  Next to her was a young man. A poet, he said. His was a quote too, from the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: ‘Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.’

Coincidentally, a ‘memory’ popped up on Facebook. A poem. I had titled it, 'A petition to stones.'

So let there be stones
beautiful ones
cut by hand or time
with edges that can wait
for moonquake and anarchy
those necessary preconditions
for bloomage and bleeding
mirrors that fracture desolate skies
and trigger
the eruption of rainbows,
stones gathered
from every stoning
that turned broken bodies
into words
to re-cleanse
our desecrated hearts.

A poem. A cobblestone, if you will. One day, perhaps, someone will polish its rough edges and make it beautiful. Then, it would be an act of resistance.  

One thing was certain, to me at least. It was poetry and cobblestones that I saw in that street. I couldn’t help thinking that there was beautiful poetry being written, recited and listened to all over the world, at that very moment and is being written as I write now. Word-rain is falling like arrows on a thick blanket of lies. They reach a scarred earth that has not been abandoned by love’s primordial nutrients. The elements will resist all efforts to subvert life.

One thing is certain, to me at least. Those who drop bombs are not stone masons. When schools, hospitals and homes are bombed, the broken pieces of concrete don’t come out in neat and uniform sizes with edges perfectly polished so that interlocking is possible.

One thing is certain, to me at least. Each broken piece of concrete, each broken heart, every tear, every cry of anguish interrupted by fresh fears and sorrows, is a word. There are innumerable grains of dust, love, despair, indignation and hope waiting for poets and poetry.

One thing is certain, to me at least. Ivan Shadr sculpted a poet and it is a word that he is arming himself with.

People are writing beautiful poetry. And they are just not going to stop.

['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 252nd 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: 

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

Read more