Kawiya

Even after writing so many love poems,
lingering like a fine, thin cut,
can there really not be a poem left unwritten,
leaving some ache in the heart?
Memories, like sharp and cruel blessings,
nails that scrape slowly, even so,
how, and at what hour, could they be cut through,
those bonds that keep tearing at a heart like this…

(So then, for that reason, I stop…
but I won’t turn it out of my heart…)

With fire in my eyes and my heart smouldering,
bearing this sweetest of pains,
out of love I will keep them hidden,
those songs I never wrote.
Though it stays in an endless bundle of sorrow
and wrings my heart without a break,
I’ll write one last verse at the very end,
so none of it is rubbed out and fades away…

(So then, for that reason, I stop…
but I won’t turn it out of my heart…)

A young man who writes poetry has filled pages with love poems, and there is still one he has never managed to write. That unwritten poem is the whole song. It sits in him like a thin cut, the kind too small to show anyone and sharp enough to sting every time he moves.

The images he reaches for are all small and sharp. Memories come back “like sharp, cruel blessings”, which is a bitter thing to say in Sinhala, where seth is the word for the good wishes chanted over someone to keep them safe. The good times are the ones cutting him now. Then he calls them nails that scrape slowly, not one clean wound but a long, patient one, and when he asks how and at what hour such ties could ever be cut, he already knows the answer.

The chorus is where he settles it. He stops. He puts the pen down and gives up on finishing the poem, and in the same breath he says he will not turn it out of his heart. Stopping the writing and letting go are two different things, and the space between them is where he lives.

By the second verse the pain has become something he almost values. His eyes burn, his heart smoulders, and he calls the ache imihiri, very sweet, then says he will hide those unwritten songs away out of love. He is guarding them, and guarding her too. The closing lines turn it into a promise: even carrying a bundle of sorrow that never lets his heart rest, he means to write one last verse at the very end so that none of it gets rubbed out and fades. He ends up holding the poem he owes her, left unfinished on purpose, because while it stays unfinished nothing is really over.