Man's ingratitude to Mother Earth

Oh! Mother Earth, oh! Mother Earth,
Thou art a balm for "kingdom of life"
Mankind, animals and birds from birth
Need thy sustenance for growth of life
They bosom of benign brown soil
With vast and varied spots of greenery
Victuals for man and beast alike;
Dotted all over the green belt
lakes and rivers to quench the jungle thirst;
The tall trees with abundant boughs
Creatures' canopy in jungle domain,
And herbal remedy for man's ills.
Oh! Mother Earth, Oh! Mother Earth
Shelter thou provide for the dead
Countless corpse laid in thy bosom
Noble cause done in diurnal course
To equilibrate Nature's pattern of life.
But man is fraught with ingratitude,
Commits villainies on pristine earth
To serve his selfish desire;
Dents the beds of river for sand,
Selfishly rapes the jungle land;
Lops the barks of greenery for timber,
For stones rips the bowels of the earth,
For hyde and tusk roams the animal's path.
Oh! Mother Earth, tortured and torn,
Thou art wane and shrink in bounty;
Villainous act of greedy man
Boomerangs on the earth with a drought;
It's a recompense a curse thou art give
For all the misdemeanours men brew.

A.F. Dawood

Bosom friends

Once upon a time
There were two friends,
They were intimate friends,
Bosom friends said to be.
The one was Samaritan
The other Sepulchre
They schooled together
Learnt together, played together
Ate together, drank together
And, for brevity's sake
Did everything together.
And, for brevity's sake
Did everything together.
Having left school,
They still got together.
Some called them
David and Jonathan,
Others called them
Achates and Alterego,
Still some called them
Tweedledum and Tweedledee,
Or Raigamaya and Gampolaya.

Nevertheless
Samaritan of that ilk
Generous, magnanimous,
Benign, benevolent
Genial, compassionate
Excelled in humanity.
Sepulchre of that ilk
Treacherous, perfidious
Traitorous, hypocritical,
Deceitful, bestial
Excelled in animality

Seeing their temperaments
Both evil and beneficent
Gods willed them asunder,
By adding two prefixes
To their existing names,
Good Samaritan the one,
Whited sepulchre the other.

Jayaweera D. Gunaratne

At the end of the journey

To feel.. that I have
Not harmed any living
Entity...when I die..

To feel, I have not
Hurt a person in cruelty
But only loved..

Humanity, love which
Costs nothing, which is pure..
That I have given of

Myself....in good ways
Conducive to simple joys
In peoples' lives

Namali Fernando

Grimace of a delicacy

When he strums her heart strings
changeable expressions you can see
on her face
Once very painful and amusing too
This rare fragile creature of a different clay,
really a precious soul; not a toy?
Please handle with care!
By mistake if it breaks?
You have to be more careful of the breakage.
A piece of a broken heart is sharper
than a razor.

Nimal Dunuhinga

Mechanic

Sweet are they with smiles
Deep in their heart vicious wiles
They take you on a ride
Demeaning your pride
Your goods are handled with great trust
Never let you distrust
In a wink they change the parts
Till you blink to go through the chart
Oh! fair men do not ball a prey
Trusting their sweet way.

Rinoza

Brat at boulevard

Brat with blue eyes
Smiled at me at boulevard
I replied
With a slightest smile
Drawn on my chapped lips
The bunch of lilies
Between my arm
And the bosom
Were struggling to
Jump into his
Tender hands

He hid his bashful face
With a lily I gave
The lily was lovingly
Entangling his
Hallucinatory Face

Flowers at boulevard
Frowned at me
Sun directed a
Harsh ray at me

Wind blew through
My untidy hair swiftly
Ordering me to
Get out of him
That he belongs to them

I expedited my legs to my cottage
When I looked back
I saw he was right behind me
He captured a
Wink in my obtuse eyes
I didn't remember
To blink for a moment
He begged a place
In my arid heart
For him to dwell,
So, I let the brat
Dwell there evermore

Panchamee Hewavissenti

I grieve

Sweet Keddagoda my native village
Fond memories of you springs in my breast
Your natural beauty and comely vissage
Awakes past reminiscences and put the same to test.

The fertile paddy fields along the river
Enriched with the alluvial soil
'Yala' and 'Maha' cultivated, and crops failed never
The farmers reaped a rich harvest for their toil

Various varieties of traditional paddy
Amply manure by nature's-bounty
Farmers raised in traditional ways
Artificial manure and chemicles not heard of those days

'But allas! these paddy fields of yore
In their pristine form are no more
My heart grieves and start pining
To see these fields destroyed for sand mining

The greed of man has over come
To cannibalise these fields for sand mining
Little realising the harm it has done
And causing untold environmental ruining

In places where these paddy fields once were
There are vast pools of water now
Caused by excavation for sand they lie forlorn
Like mini tanks in the dry zone

Hunnandeni kanda with its flourishing tea bushes
Was a sight to see those days
Now it lies fallow, overgrown with wild bushes
Giving shelter to distillers of illicit liquors

Digana the stretch of meadows known by that name
Was asking to a smiling comely dame
Now this dame is raped for sand mining
Leaving pools behind widely gaping

I grieve to see this sorry picture
Of the village where I lived my salad days
Its natural beauty , but now its irreparable rupture
Made by man in his mad forays

Ill fares the village where nature betrays
Worshippers of Mammon may have a field day
But the beauty of the village our inherrent pride
When once spoilt can never be made

P. Godawatta

A tree

Tree's always lovely to behold.
in the flush of dawn, in the glow of sunset
The weeping bamboos by the river bank,
the mara and the banyan trees on the plane
In spring budding and burgeoning
Summer adorns with leaves and birds
Autumn sets the tree in blazing blossoms
winter glitters the boughs in frosty days.
weather varies, time runs by
seasons came and vanish
skies of grey and skies of blue
the sunlight and the rains
Face change as years roll
but the tree like my friend, Divina,
always lovely, always trusting,
with a certain smile,
now in distant land where
elms and oaks stand

Rohan Jayetilleke