From a Borrowed Land

Shash Trevett

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781912196821
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Marked by trauma, From a Borrowed Land bears witness to the Tamil experience during the Sri Lankan civil war. From the safety of 'the borrowed land', these poems remember and grieve both historical and personal loss: loss of lives, of a homeland, of a language, and of a way of life.

Blue Lotus Flowers4

I
What She Says

Why do you ask me

when he will come?

He is like the man from the tall hills

his face hidden by rainclouds.

The blue of his sapphires glint only

in the darkness.

And he comes and goes at will

like a waterfall crashing down the mountainside.

My tears fall like petals

and wet the plains at his feet.

4 This poem has been written in the style of early classical Tamil poetry as laid out in the Tolkaappiyam. The poem mirrors the akam poems of the classical Sangam period (second century CE) which deal with the interior landscapes of lovers and married life. Akam poems use flora and fauna to describe the moods of the narrator – the interior mirrors the exterior and the reader is able to place the path of a relationship based on the landscapes the poems invoke.

II
What She Says

I look to the blue hills

and wait for his return.

His beauty, like the blooms

of the tiger claw tree,

is bright and scarlet in the darkness.

He is gone, like a heron once fed

flies to another sky.

My tears run like waves

on a salty shore.

III
What She Says

As the morning dew

wet the green plains

he came to me.

As beautiful as a peacock on the hillside.

As strong as a bull elephant

swaying among the young grass.

Bright as a green parrot

skimming the mango tree

he called to me.

My honey rose and flowed.

The bees made soft music

as he drank his fill.

IV
What She Says

In the forest where the

sparrow hen pecks at the cassia roots

he watched like a stag

warned of a stranger’s approach.

He was strong and wide like a river.

The plowman harvested by his shore

and Indran rained flowers

strewing the ground like a bridal bower.

That was then.

Now I wait for him

trembling for his touch

and my tears water the laurel tree.

V
What She Says

The sun has parched my tears

my bangles slip from my wrist.

Their shards cut my feet

dotting the floor

like the dried kungumum

on my brow line.

For he has gone to the wasteland

like a lone hen-eagle searching

from the branches of the portia tree.

The mid-day sun burns his feet

as he stalks, a petulant tiger

denied its kill.

And here, by my waterless well

bandits threaten my laurel tree...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• New Words, New Clothes
• In Your Old Age
• The Sinhala Only Act, 1956
• I.P.K.F.
• Stone Walls
• Muthumai Kolam
• புதைகுழிப் பாடல்
• Grave Song
• The Memorial
• Things Happen
• Now that the War is Over
• Blue Lotus Flowers
• Village
• I was Na’amah
• எனது பாடல்கள்
• My Songs
• Psalm
• The Last Mango Tree
• Gardeners’ Question Time, followed by the News
• My Grandfather’s House
• Acknowledgements