Deviyange Bare

I remember a day like today
when we threw ourselves a birthday party
What was short? Something to drink, something to eat?
Money became the whole of life, and was it all just to suffer?
The poruwa (wedding platform) where we linked fingers and made our vows
I broke those promises, and with a ruler
I measured out a thousand things, and she left along with them
Running, gambling, the habit, the sin, the reckoning
Debt on top of debt, and six years
Scratching marks on a prison wall, my heart afraid
A dead mind and a dead heart leave me good for nothing
That craving is still a curse today
I let the job go
because I wanted to gamble
Trying to pile up money and coins
I ran my cons, and with bits of charcoal, one of these days
I write my wrongs here and there across the walls
Wipe away these teardrops, come and blow through
sweet wind, come into this life
and hold me

A rider who climbed up on a man’s back
could burn his chest with fire for ten months
Debt from all four sides, notices gathered in the papers
Without knowing it I lay down on a bed of poison
An unsteady life, a wretched farce, a tiled house
whose four corners suck out whatever is left
Turn after turn, sin, the drain, the smoke, cursed
and the life gets handed over to the gods
Time never came near, there is grief and no pardon
Keep going, heart, bear it, I am the lesson
Before the leap the four legged fire card lights up
tossed onto the letters, flung toward the cloth
As loyal as I was to it, in debt for the privilege, all in uproar
Paid it off in full, wrapped in a cloth, for a life turned bitter
Told off for the lie that stripped me bare, life led astray
grown used to karma, to the shape of the game
The deed was signed away at the ninth bid
I hid the interest, the debt, and the handcuffs came down
Constant upheavals wrote the fate I got
In the red, gods for refuge, boxed into a dark cell

Accused, and it came to ninety years
Groundless lies turned into the foundation
Rotten social divides, racial ones
called harmless, on a road that runs on violence
Firefly lives, and the feeling that wrestled with my mind
Illusion bore me and raised me, blood and flesh
That sorrow is known. I lied. Let me admit it now.

The meaning of truth brings the skin out in bumps
Pride in colour makes volcanoes erupt
The strange thing about time is how ungrateful a man can be
I think it over, an echo beside the stupa
Killing to die, breaking to build
open one eye and this society stands naked
What you walked toward, what you got by wishing
hand it all over into the gods’ keeping

On the dusty road, a light from the gods
will it show itself with love?
Even hidden behind a wind of sorrow
can it be done, in the holy name?
Everything echoing in the heart
will it stop at the sound of a bell?
At some moment that has to come
will I be let out of the gods’ keeping?

Illusion sits on the throne, true and false
have gone to the dogs, gone missing
Look how beautiful lives turned ugly
I can’t take any more of it, I have had enough
Firefly lives have gone dark
so where are these gods of yours?
Nurses go on hunger strike for their pay
Here, service and honour, and over there, the ones we call creators
Let’s talk about it, or else wrap them in saris
The heart is in pieces, and the joy of the streets today
sits where people go to drink
The ones who scared us, who said it, did it, handed it out
the gods’ decisions are arrows
Today, more than diabetes, this country’s mouth needs manners
The job that changed who has and who has not
We never once talked heart to heart
The grown ups circled round and ruined it
I settled my heart by drinking
Grief, they say, belongs to the well off
saying and writing poems and fine words
When I was small my fear
was coming last in class, and feeling small
I knocked back a drink, and where I couldn’t cope, the demon
lives inside, I knew it all along
Enough of the scolding, now it is stabbing
This is the second letter into the gods’ keeping

Born with no thought for horoscopes, fantasy
in this world, out in the open light
Bowing, doing, selling out
none of those tricks in my filthy heart
Whatever games they play
naked girls are my fantasy
Hanging onto the world and onto memory, not one
girl got out, except into the garment mill
Coming in, nobody brought peacock feathers, floating
cradles we never slept in, middle class walkways
Lives dancing the Vadiga Patuna (a Kandyan dance), pinned under the beat
conjuring mansions and terraces, a wannama (dance verse) of dreams
Who do I tell, in the middle of those dying dreams
with a living pen in my hand that writes and runs
salt coming down from the nib, turning into blood
The book of filled ruled pages has become my life
Do you remember the words that struck both ears of my mind
in among my innocent dreams
Why do my teardrops turn to steam
while they tell me the dreams I see are worth something
From your bones to your grandmother
I hold a grudge
Don’t you remember what you said to me? Take it
come back into my memory, today or tomorrow
I’ll give you a memory, smash your mouth
and your teeth with it
In the rented room where we ate scraped from the pot
the night moon was my friend
Pages smeared over, a blue nibbed pen
wove the words and wrote them down
The colourful dreams I loved
the me that was made for them
they break it, smash it and throw it away
me, before my heart even knows
Mother, why didn’t you kill me
on the very day I was born?
It hurts me to see you
sewing every single day
Until the black crow turns white
a wish in my head killed my heart
I wrote a heart’s dreams in my own blood
Whatever anyone says, the drive that runs in my heart
I put into my hands and feet
I stabbed the very hand I eat with, and my
mind whispered it to me

On the dusty road……

Still today, no sleep
memories with no filter
no end to the drinking either
patterns I never even imagined
A gear that won’t go into reverse
no slope left to fall down
Thoughts with no map
in debt right down to the last breath
I measured time by staring
at a roof with no ceiling
I told myself it was comfort
and now I can’t bear to sleep
There is nowhere for me to go
nothing for me to do
I don’t want a heaven
and I’m not afraid of hell
Burning and burning then dying out, gone out
lying still, then burning again
The smell of smoke, cooling inside a sorrow
cut and cut and cut and welded back
The journey you go on and never come back from
until then the highest truth stays hidden
The titled name of Kadawaragama
and lies conjured up all around it
For the younger brother of the gods
when the crown was placed on him
The world is one bare stretch
with none of the six coloured rays
Did I hand merit over to sin, me as well
caught in the middle, sunk into my own selfishness
Do you remember that day?
Was I the only one in the wrong?
Demon masks and turning seasons
betrayed my plain eyes
Fist clenched, standing up
I swear it, for the sake of the breath I take
It will never be a sin
even if it is certainly a curse
I’ll kill your cells
whatever happens to me after
Even if the truth is bitter
however anyone takes it
Problems one after another
even if I solve them one by one
When the start, the middle and the end are tangled, when
the fire is festering inside
Where are the gods, where is my
conscience, when it goes off again and again

“Deviyange Bare” is what a Sri Lankan says when there is nothing left to try: leave it in the gods’ keeping. The song takes that everyday phrase and turns it into a letter, then a second letter, posted to gods who never write back. The verses hand the mic from one voice to another, each carrying a life that has come apart, and the sung hook between them asks the same question in the gentlest voice on the track.

The first voice opens at a birthday party, back when the only worry was what to drink and what to eat. From there it drops straight down. The poruwa where he tied the knot, the vows he broke, the wife who walked out with the thousand things he had measured up for her, debt piled on debt, six years inside, marks scratched on a cell wall to count the days. Gambling gets named without any excuse as the thing that swallowed the job, the money and the marriage. What is left of prayer by the end of that verse is a man asking a sweet wind to come in and wipe his face.

The next verses widen the anger out from one man to a whole country. There is the poisoned bed he lay down on without meaning to, the property deed sold off at the ninth bid, the hidden interest and the handcuffs. Then nurses starving themselves for a pay rise while others get called creators, racial and class divides passed off as harmless, grown ups who wrecked a childhood, and a village girl whose only escape route ran to a garment mill. The language turns coarse on purpose here, one word even blanked out in the written lyric, because the point is a mouth that has stopped being polite.

The images are worth decoding. Kanamadiri, the fireflies, stand for small bright lives that hold their own light for a moment and then go dark. Peacock feathers and cradles are the comforts you are either born into or not, and this voice was not. Vadiga Patuna and the wannama are Kandyan dance forms, so lives “dancing the Vadiga Patuna, pinned under the beat” are performing something beautiful while the rhythm holds them down. The six coloured rays are the Buddha’s aura, missing from a world gone flat. And the anointed shrine name, with lies conjured up around it, is a jab at the whole business of vows and offerings that people buy their way through when justice fails them.

The last verse gives the hook its answer. No sleep, no filter on the memories, a gear that will not go into reverse, thoughts with no map, and a man who wants no heaven and fears no hell. The tenderest lines sit right beside the hardest ones, the boy asking his mother why she did not kill him the day he was born, then telling her it hurts him to watch her sew every single day. Nothing gets resolved, and that is honest. The closing question is not where the gods went but where your own conscience is when it goes off inside you, over and over.