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Daya Dissanayake

When he saw the
Suffering
And the Pain around him
Prince Siddhartha could leave
Everything behind
Even his family
To seek a way to end such suffering
For all beings,
Because he left his wealth behind.

Today
When we see the suffering
Pain Inequality
And exploitation around us we can leave
Our families
Our jobs
Our business
Only to find our own salvation
Leaving behind our loved ones
To continue their suffering
Because we have nothing to leave for them.

Gautam Vegda

I would have shed
My skin like a serpent,
If it could change my caste
Like that,
But it’s so imbibed in all
Like the latex of cactus,
If you peel the skin,
It will emerge,
From the core.
Schlepping or oozing,
Either way is equally
Excruciating and malignant.

Indran Amirthanayagam

I photograph ruins and share the snaps with my cousins –
of Papa’s house by Saint Joseph’s Church in Atchuvely,
foundation stones and arches of the poet Tambimuttu’s compound
on the main road. I went to Jaffna and the adjoining villages

for this, and to see the red earth again where bombs rained
from fighter jets and helicopter gunships, to finger indentations
in walls from not so errant shells, holes in roofs not yet repaired,
like broken palmyra at Pappa’s home, abandoned, full of leaves,

a well whose water has not been drawn in twenty years – I cannot
say exactly how many have passed since Tigers left the property
to soldiers who scrawled telephone numbers on the...

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