An Old Man Sits Under A Tree
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.
