THE ANTHOLOGY OF LANKAN POETRY

 

Kaleidoscope:

DCRA’s collected another set of scripts, (yawn)

Of the warm one family that is Lankan Writers.

Viji Yapa’s bounded and propped it just

And the cover’s cute, so it buy you must – or at the least –

Must read, biding your idle hour

In the glazing bookstore, tiled,

Amidst fashionable time-dwellers and

All-seeing, nothing-knowing sellers,

So no grass will grow under them feet

Those minutes in the bookshop

When you wanna dodge the street.

Little Corporate family of Lankan Writers,

Lakdas’ Matisse there and his Aldred here,

So-called poetic cannon of one’s Mailing List,

Aunts and uncles stare out white sheet

Like immovable road signs out the mist,

Begging to be read, reviewed and revived

Aged, dead or dying – they,

And in this queer transitory state, speaking ferpect sense,

Making sounds, being themselves; or, lying,

The Poetic Family of a Mailing List:

Arse Poetica: that is the verse we’re living.

And did he, DCRA, (international authority

For this Lankan Family; though I know him not,

Seen him never) drink wine with brown bread hot

The day him President woke up and said “χσρίίζθικ

ЉίήЂЄϋΩ ΪάάξήκηθΘιζ γΰβααήέ”, without batting an eye?

 

(Note — Edited version from the original)