The Bridge
For Grandpa
“…The cold smell of potato mould,
the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.”
Seamus Heaney - Digging
1
Mom handed me a half of a palapea
One late afternoon
More than one and half score years ago
(It’s the first I remember having,
but I must have had them even before then)
I bit into it squatting opposite her
On the newly daubed floor
Of the old kitchen
Chattering away to her about some matter at school
As she was cleaning sprats for dinner.
With the crispy skin, ridged,
And yellowish like butter on the head,
With a crown of brownish fibrils,
And snow-white on the bottom,
With soft cottony flesh, It tasted so coolly delicious,
On my tongue, Tingling my taste buds.
Through the soot-coated rusty wire mesh,
Broken and bent out of shape in the middle
That covered the kitchen’s only window
The Sun,
a globe painted with the colour of steel melting
Was now sinking below the coconut tops
Beyond the farthest edge of the paddy field
Stretching away into the distance.
The Sunset, as much as the Sunrise,
Now I know is one thing for one world
And another for the other.
2
Grandpa used to bring us many of them,
Strung like white bulbs on a raw ekle,
When he returned from Siriwardena mudalali’s,
Where he dehusked coconut,
Dad would say, for chicken feed,
Until a rash on his legs, Forced him to quit it.
3
Once Jusiappuhami, the cart-man, sold palapea,
By the roadside, At the northern boundary fence,
Of our school;
In an open box made of mango planks,
cheap and rough-hewn,
He kept his merchandise.
His charges for them were proportionate:
The bigger ones fetched five rupees each,
And the prices fell
In direct proportion to the sizes.
But, the cheaper smaller ones, we found out soon,
Tasted much better.
I’d badger mom and grandma
For money to buy them, During the interval,
Over the barbed wire fence, Until our principal,
For reasons which we never knew,
Forbade him to ply his humble trade there.
After some time, I heard,
Jusiappuhami was confined to the bed
Having been attacked by his own bull
That dragged his cart, And a little later on
I learned he’d died.
4
One August over two decades ago
I persuaded my next-door friend,
To go to Siriwardena mudalali’s,
Where with (dagger-like) spiky knives,
We coerced palapeas out of the coconuts,
Split with a curved machete,
By a shabbily-dressed, stony-faced,
Betel-chewing, ugly, black woman,
Who seemed to fit the definition of a shrew,
And put them into the old grocery bags,
We`d taken with us stuffed in our pockets.
Once I`d been cloyed with my spoils,
I offered them, With uncharacteristic generosity
To mom and my brother.
5
Now grandpa and his employer
Are both no more here
And my friend is a coconut vendor himself,
And I’m a humble poet chained to an unshakeable past
Trying to link the two worlds together
With the bridge of language.
Let me be the bridge. Let me fill the gap.
Words - Jayashantha Jayawardhana
****
Can you see it in my eyes?
You don’t know
how I do feel you
I’m yet to express
desire within me
I shiver when
I’m close to you
you don’t know
how much I want you?
I long to say I love you
But, but I’m terrified
of your reply
(What would it be?)
confounded like a child
I’ve becomeparalyzed
hidden emotions
lead to pain and
silent cries
butI just can’t
tell you
can’t you see it
in my eyes?
Confessing through my
Lovely poem
my dilemma’précised
Words - Saumya Aloysius