Snapshots

Holy Ash

my father applies to my forehead, every night I’m home, I mean
in the house of my parents,
with slow circular rubs of his thumb; as a man
may discover and cherish
the tender button
between the thighs of the woman
he loves. And now my father is whispering in rhythm
words I cannot understand
– his own eyes closed,
the act is of urgent gravity, a holding
in place of ourselves,
in this room, in this house, in this country
he came to forty years ago and which puts forth
the reflex
shyness in me once he finishes,
kisses me on the mouth, and we embrace
on the unlit landing,
one of us
standing, to make room, a step above the other.

* * *

Today

I think (I have to)
– does this help? Am I saying the right thing? –
it’s no
mountain to climb,

more
a subsidence, or falling asleep;
nothing
will

can effect
can work,
and neither do you
want a void a blank some bollocks

about emptying, purgation, simplicity
– what you’re after
is a warm bit of nonsense,
a sloka that swims

away from the mind and its mad,
daffodil-obsessed
eye; today
turns soft and rots,

the tiny actions that remind you of yourself and that you’re alive
disappear; yep,
procrastination is a way
not of killing but reassuring oneself

of time, of all
that’s lost now
you’re brisk as a root,
unurgent

* * *

Criticism

I show my mother, a sixty-eight year-old Sri Lankan woman
who never reads any poems except mine,
James Wright’s, with its twist-ending: ‘I have wasted my life’.
She is the happiest and most fearless person I know;
many times she has had to stand up for herself,
but that is not the only thing she knows how to do.

It’s beautiful except the end, why did he have to say that
instead of ‘I am very happy with my life!’

This is a real question I think. Why is it so hard to write
happiness? – Because the sad believe they will change
the world . . . And my Tamil family, crying at every chance
life is to enjoy! (the last word not an iamb but a trochee);
‘living dangerously’, as Nietzsche had it, in this country and that country
– are their hard-travelled smiles so very trite?

* * *

Happiness

is another day
spent reading Hughes and Hughes,
no doubt
letting myself
and the side down,
my tribe
(which one?)
all but kicked to the curb,
clamouring at the slave-hauled blocks
of the walls of the pyramid of my concentration,
leaving blood on the sign
that says do not disturb.

~ Vidyan Ravinthiran is a Sri Lankan poet who teaches at Durham University. His debut, Grun-tu-molani (Bloodaxe, 2014), was shortlisted for multiple first collection awards, including the Forward. He is also co-editor of Prac Crit, the online magazine of poetry and poetics.