“After You, Lakdhas” by Samodh Porawagamage

For Lakdhas Wikkaramasinha (1941-1978)

Or is it Lak—dasa, you Servant of Lanka?
I recite you mixing the correct portion of home
brews in my tea. I’m not at home, never found

it in a place; literally, I left for Texas,
to rear-append my surname, and naïvely wet
dreaming to teach a wee bit of you to the gen

zeers. There’s a temptation here to wipe
my arse in language that I resist. I’m very lost
in poetry, but this is about me, not you. My poem

and how your bruised masculinity curls around it.
You’d have been old, senile, and dying
anyway by now. So there remains

no point coating all my bitter grudges
in brain fluid. No colonialists either,
but worse cobras here. They’re called

rattlesnakes. Hot girls behead and skin
them at festivals, such grandeur
of freakish style. People flock in

from all the states, even abroad. Oh how
you couldn’t just resist to find one
slithering in the waters of Kelaniya!

Or was it in Galkissa that you died,
bathing shirtless in the sea? I still look
for the now-extinct brand of finest

arrack that empowered you to swim
the forty-six miles to India—as if it matters
that you drowned in freshwater, tap water, or first

in yourself. You see, I was loaned
your books by Cornell, Chicago, Congress,
Harvard, and all of them had

water damage, like you travelled from
Borella Kanatta to piss on them. I’m certainly
not surprised. Malinda writes in his blog

that you were “misresidenced” to God even in
your grave. So wake up, show yourself
or at least the bones. Don’t make me dig up

the haunted land. I haven’t seen you, so even then
I won’t recognize you. There’s no photo of you
anywhere. When I Google, Soyinka pops up. Another

reluctant Messiah, sure, but not you. Pan-pan,
let me process the whispered news that it really
is Ondaatje involved in assembling your

selected poems. And if you really must, come
tonight to arson Harvard’s copy of Lustre Poems lying
on my bedstand. I’ll somehow pay for the damages.