Galle, Galle, they shout, the bus conductors
Near a new paved highway to a coastal town.
Gallus gallus is a chicken, a red one for that matter
That they say made this town, Galle.
And a few miles internally
Near a jungle, you get the wild junglefowl
As the national bird of Sri Lanka. That too is
Gallus, Gallus lafayetti
Named after a famous French man
Who carried two passports
And here too you get a dichotomy of sorts
The colonial and the indigenous, forts and mudbrick houses
To conquer and to resist, the bucolic and the urban
The native and the foreigner.
A hodge-podge holding a bewitching charm
All you need to do is to cross an entrance
Which has a dome on which a weather wane sits
Where a rooster holds his poise
And you just have to be like Julius Caesar in Gaul
And utter the words “Veni Vidi Vici”. The only difference
Being, the foreign national comes and sees
The beauty of this enchanting enclave
Only to cede his heart
And be conquered by Galle.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Published by Curiosity-driven life (Dilantha Gunawardana)
Dr Dilantha Gunawardana graduated from the University of Melbourne, as a molecular biologist, and moonlights as a poet. He currently serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Botany, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Dilantha lives in a chimeric universe of science and poetry. Dilantha’s poems have been accepted for publication /published in HeartWood Literary Magazine, Canary Literary Magazine, Boston Accent, Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry, Zingara Poetry Review, The Wagon and Ravens Perch, among others. Dilantha too has two anthologies of poetry, 'Kite Dreams' (2016) and 'Driftwood' (2017), both brought to the readership by Sarasavi Publishers, and is working on his third poetry collection (The Many Constellations of Home). Dilantha’s pet areas of teaching and research, include, Nitrogen Fixation, RNA biology, Phytoremediation, Agricultural Biology, and Bioethics & Biosafety. Dilantha blogs at – https://meandererworld.wordpress.com/ -, where he has nearly 2000 poems.
View all posts by Curiosity-driven life (Dilantha Gunawardana)
