Lost Column
For Richard de Zoysa
Bite marks on the wall,
boot stains on the rug,
your crumpled red tee shirt
chokes on the wrecked bed.
They sniffed around in your room
for hours,
clawed through the shadows,
lifted prints off your thoughts,
left with your satchel,
spilling words along the way.
No scrapbook of your columns,
no tin box of your poems,
no pirith chant,
no séance.
In the belly of the jungle,
on a pyre of tires,
they erased you
word by word
Eventually,
You no longer notice the tarred-out road signs
you get to where you got to go.
The sea lulls you
to see only what you need to see.
You stop gathering the garlands
those placards and slogans
now pulped and paper machéd.
Your three-brick stove
wouldn’t know what you ate,
petrified kindling carries no taste.
You forget the Morse code,
the alphabet soup of UN, NGO, IDP.
Refrains fade and the jeeps go home.
You stop
counting the dead.
You don’t hear the waves
crash at your feet,
or feel the sand under your sole.
You don’t wait for the unarrived bus
you walk and you walk,
you ignore the burden on your back.