
The first lady of a race
Who made a burgher population
As commonplace as a mouth-watering lamprais
She was the gust on the wrinkled pages
That lamented the demise of the burghers
Who took wings of migration to domicile on unfamiliar lands.
She weaved tradition and tore stereotypes
Of the rituals of admixed colonial blood,
– How endearing they were -, yet threw out the falsehoods
Or unpatritotism and incivility. And a woman, of burgher origin,
Was carried away by angels last week
Where inside a little entrapment of wood
You could find a woman of wit, charm and a worldly presence
In a scarlet red dress, who made her kind, part of our tradition,
A must in our daily lives. How king coconut wine or
Love cake was as much Sri Lankan, as milk rice and treacle.
She will be lost to inclement times
Yet her memory will stand at every hotel
Or eatery, at every occasion, a man or woman opens
A packet of rice, embellished with ash plantain, meat
A cutlet, sambol and tempered eggplant. We are only
As colorful as the lives we lived.
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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.
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