A POEM By Basil Fernando ( dedicated to M. I. Kuruvilla)
In a day in July 1983
When our nation had gone mad
I visited you
The sea was calm behind your house.
You greeted me as before
But something had gone wrong
We both knew
Measured silence we kept
You were the master
I was the child
We had played that game before
But that day it stopped.
Our cheerful beliefs shattered
We saw the unknown unfolding
Fates smiling truant and gods mocking
The sea was calm behind your house.
Basil Fernando is a Sri Lankan poet and has published several collections of poems. An anthology of his poems entitled, Sundramaithry, has been translated into Malayalam by Dr. Dhanya Menon, and published in 2008. This is the first anthology of Sri Lankan poetry translated into any India language. His writings may be seen at www.basilfernando.org under literature. This poem was first published in Channels Vol. 12 No. 1 – The English Writers Cooperative of Sri Lanka, October 2004.
