Bird Seed (A Conversation between Two Colonials)

Poetry
Indran Amirthanayagam 

You say, write
in English, sober up,
spring from your roots--
 
but the tubers
are Tamil, as well,
and Sinhalese,
 
and they dance
the baila
in Portugese.
 
“I am Carib, man,
I make coolie stew”--
thou art thy brother’s
 
keeper—yet you remind
me of English power,
thrust and thrum,
 
tuck and drum
and swimming silly
splashing
 
in the blue green
ocean which spawned
you and me--
 
and millions
of other blighters
who only saw Brighton
 
but eat bruised fruit now
blended into juice
that sticks polyglot
 
on the tongue.
Angst, you say,
 is German.
 
Catamaran,
I say, sails
from India.
 
Je suis fier,
proud and
mad hat
 
in awe of
the dictionary
of common language
 
that belongs
to no academy
and includes
 
what birds
bring
by night
 
at howling
speed
to nest
 
for a season
in these
English fields.

​

​Indran Amirthanayagam is a multilingual poet and diplomat. He has published 13 books thus far, including the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning, his poetic history of the Sri Lankan civil war, Uncivil War, and The Splintered Face:Tsunami Poems. He writes a blog occasionally at indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com. His latest books are Il n'est de solitude que l'ile lointaine, Ventana Azul and Pwezi a Kat Men. 
​ 
Photo credit: Fabienne Douce 

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