I could forget all this
forget the flight
headlong through Galle Road
clutching an instant’s spark of hope,
refusing to abandon this wretched
vulnerable life
even though the very earth shuddered
– and so too, my heart –
forget the sight
of a thigh-bone protruding
from an upturned, burnt-out car
a single eye fixed in its staring
somewhere between earth and sky
empty of its eye
a socket, caked in blood
on Dickman’s Road, six men dead
heads split open
black hair turned red
a fragment of a sari
that escaped burning
bereft of its partner
a lone left hand
the wristwatch wrenched off
a Sinhala woman, pregnant,
bearing, unbearably,
a cradle from a burning house
I could forget all this
forget it all, forget everything.
But you, my girl,
snatched up and flung away
one late afternoon
as you waited in secret
while the handful of rice
– found after so many days –
cooked in its pot,
your children hidden beneath the tea bushes
low-lying clouds shielding them above –
how shall I forget the broken shards
and the scattered rice
lying parched upon the earth?