An Old Man Sits Under A Tree

By Basil Fernando -April 28, 2013 

Basil Fernando

An old man sits under the shade of a tree

On the slab of a grave.

He is no sage

Running away from world,

He was the grave digger.

Now in retirement,

Returning to his familiar world.

The only interludes are the night visits

Back home for his drink, dinner and sleep.

In his dreams he moves into the underworld

Of Hades, Lucifer or Yama,

Sometimes sees the faces of those

He buried.

Cemetery is place of ceremonies

Of emotions, a powerful world,

Where love is dramatized

And people become real.

Tears, loud cries, explosive words,

Flowers and candles, trying to express

Language of the heart.

Unforgettable cries of mothers

When the young are buried,

Children saying goodbye

to their mothers and fathers,

A place where intellect is silent

Or confused.

Then there are unusual times

When men in uniform

Come with gallons of illicit liquor,

And loads of wounded dead bodies.

Preparing rapid fires

In the dead of the night,

To bury all the secrets,

As uniformed men

Guards the gates.

As the days go by,

Visiters come,

Asking many questions.

Between heaven, hell and earth

With Angels, devils and spirits

Sits this old man

His minds confused with facts

Fabrications and fantasies,

Images of thousands of faces,

Confused about fate, faith

Truth, justice and despair,

Hypocrisy, disorder and fear

And tales of a thousand varieties

Crowding in his mind.

He knows more than historians,

Reporters, journalists

Judges or jurors

In the images that appear,

Disappear and reappear

In this mind

Are the truths

World does not wish

To know.

I then photographed beauty

Who are you?

I asked a bird

Posing  for a photograph.

I am beauty,

The bird told me.

Are you from heaven

Or earth?

I asked  the bird.

I have wings and feet,

I eat and sing,

The bird told me.

Are you an angel?

I asked.

No, the angels

Were modeled after me,

The bird replied.

I then photographed,

Beauty.

*Basil Fernando published his first volume of poems A New Era to Emerge in 1972. Since then, he has published several volumes of poems in English and two collections in Sinhala. His poems have appeared in several Sri Lankan and international anthologies. His poems have been translated into many Western and Asian languages. A translated anthology of his poems was published in Malayalam entitled Sundaramaithry. In 1983, he and Richard Zoysa shared the first prize for poetry in New Ceylon Writings, published by Professor Yasmin Gunaratne.