I Dream Of A Country…
[Inspired by Meena Kandasamy’s ; “I Dream Of An English”]

by Sunalie Ratnayake

( September 25, 2012, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian)

I dream of a country;

where the soothing breeze may kiss my face with all its true candor,

a breeze that shall pacify the frames of a thousand shattered lives,

perhaps even more - tens of thousands so dear,

lives crushed by myriad jingoists of the hour,

and that breeze, I dream to have never seen,

the two-faced, unmindful culprits insincere,

the ones who have wounded every notion of humanity, through the façade of command,

seeming to continue their filthy drive, till they suck every bit of gore,

leaving the everyday-citizen, in the dark, as a sheer skeleton bone,

I dream such dominants to vanish, into mere thin overhead air,

but also worry, their malice may loam, once a clean and comforting midair.

I dream of a country;

where the trees of coconut, booming bunches of yield,

forming arcs that aim the briny blue sea,

such contours and dimensions of nature’s flair,

as they swing to and fro, swiping the water’s rim,

to croon the melodies of ten-thousands of tales,

indescribable, concealed, conveniently wrapped-up in an era bygone,

in the least, I dream for the saplings to remain,

holding witness to unsettled spiteful mortal pain.

I dream of a country;

where the golden fields of paddy shall behold - with its cumbersome grains impregnated and bold,

the tales of gloom, of thy farmers jinxed and sore - with no names, no titles, no revenue, no homes,

their spouses and daughters, sons, kith and kin - the inheritors of this curse, a livelihood deficient in gains,

with no retort for them to even dimly sustain,

yes, in a country as such, I dream and I dream,

for the fields to chant loud, let thy voices echo,

to the bearers of office, till their lobes would explode – till their guilt may galore,

the tales of those who gave life,

to the field’s grandeur,

now, the same fields of paddy, that saw sunshine in their grower’s hands,

brazenly confined to a pictorial backdrop,

of a movie, a visual in goggle-box - God only knows,

while the farmer’s retort remain suicidal thoughts,

as the grains go rotten inside dripping carryalls,

I dream for this shocking plight of the provider of our diet - to be swiftly reformed,

before more suicides are caught,

the sharecropper who should otherwise be festooned by us all..

[Inspired by Meena Kandasamy’s ; “I Dream Of An English”]

Sunalie Ratnayake is a Sri Lankan Jour

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