Alfreda de Silva (1930-2001) worked for the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka and also wrote poems for children, short stories, and feature articles and made television and radio broadcasts for the BBC and the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation: she also published in 1990 a prose memoir, Pagoda House. She became a Fellow of the Trinity College of London in Speech and Drama in 1956 and won the 1993 Zonta Award for her contribution to fine arts in Sri Lanka. The beautifully wrought, yearning poems of her two collections, Out of the dark the sun and The Unpredictable Blood, deserve to be back in print. She writes of frustrated homecomings, vanished homesteads, in measured rhythms and with exact, stinging word-choices. This is one of four poems by her in Out of Sri Lanka.
*
Summertime
A red sunset consumes the sky.
Large waves embrace the shore.
The tips of the grass by the pond
appear singed as the fire spreads
from the west, and the empty fields
look on the sky in silence.
The soft breeze sweeping over
is tinged with warmth.
The red earth of a newly laid road
irritates the eyes. From a fruit-laden
mango tree, a songbird intermittently
sings its song. The sharp stones
littering the road have learnt
the taste of blood.
Stones cast by the wayside
laugh mockingly.
Memories spread.
Suddenly, as the wind turns cold
the heart aches.
The green of the gum tree,
the beauty of the water flowing
with abandon from a brimming pond,
are telescoped into the future.
Time now long past
presses mutely on the mind.
Selvi
(tr. from Tamil by Shash Trevett)
Selvi [Selvanithi Thiyagaraja] (1960-1991) was born in a village just outside Jaffna in the north of Sri Lanka. An ardent supporter of women’s rights, she had been active in feminist circles since the early 1980s. She founded the feminist journal Tholi and was a prominent member of Poorani Illam, a women’s centre offering support to those traumatised by the war. In 1991, when a third-year student of Theatre and Dramatic Arts at the University of Jaffna, she was abducted by the LTTE. Although never loud in her condemnation of the Tamil Tigers, Selvi’s work was often critical of their practices; she was held captive along with fifty other writers, artists and playwrights. In 1992 she was awarded the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, yet despite the publicity gained, she was never seen again. In 1997 the Tigers confirmed that she had been executed. Selvi’s clear and strident poetry is full of concern for the freedom of women to be able to live, dream and flourish despite repression and war. This is one of three poems by her in Out of Sri Lanka.
*
The Intersection
I love that intersection
where one path leads
to a certain little house.
A few dwarf stores
their old plank doors half closed
break the deserted loneliness
and stray dogs
with mouths down on the ground
sleep here and there.
It's just an intersection
with nothing special about it.
Yet
I love
that intersection
with one path leading
to a certain
little house.
Ariyawansa Ranaweera
(tr. from Sinhala by Liyanage Amarakeerthi)
Ariyawansa Ranaweera (b. 1942) is a prolific poet, translator and a freelance critic from the south of Sri Lanka, who writes in both Sinhala and English, and is acclaimed for what he can do with what seems ordinary language, and ordinary landscapes. He studied at the University of Peradeniya and at Kelaniya University, and works in public service. He has published more than forty Sinhala books, fifteen of which are poetry, and has won the State Literary Award several times for poetry, poetry translations and translations of prose works; he has also won several other awards for both poetry and drama, and was recently awarded an honorary degree from Sabaragamuwa National University, in recognition of his contribution to Sinhala Literature. This is one of six poems by him in Out of Sri Lanka.
