Free Handwriting by Michael Ondaatje Page A

gesture of
    “protection” “reassurance”
    towards clouds and birdcall
    to this quick terror
    in the four men
    moving under him
    The Buddha with them
    all night by a small
    thorn fire, touching
    the robe at his shoulder,
    vitarka mudra
—“gesture
    of calling for a discourse.”
    Three of the men asleep.
    The youngest feeds the fire
    beside the bronze,
    allows himself honey
    as night progresses
    as sounds quiet and thicken,
    the shift during night hours
    to lesser more various animals.
    Creatures like us, he thinks.
    Beyond this pupil of heat
    all geography is burned
    No mountain or star
    no river noise,
                   nothing
    to give him course.
    His world is
    a honey pot
    a statue on its side
    the gaze restless
    from firelight
                   He climbs
    behind the bronze
    slides his arm around
    with the knife
    and removes the eyes
                   chipped gems
    fall into his hands
                   then startles
    innocent
    out of his nightmare
    rubs his own eyes
    He stands and
    breathes night
    air deep
    into himself
    swallows all
    he can of
    thorn-smoke
    nine small sounds
    a distant coolness
                   Dark peace,
    like a cave of water

To Anuradhapura
    In the dry lands
    every few miles, moving north,
    another roadside Ganesh
    Straw figures
    on bamboo scaffolds
    to advertise a family
    of stilt-walkers
    Men twenty feet high
    walking over fields
    crossing the thin road
    with their minimal arms
    and “lying legs”
    A dance of tall men
    with the movement of prehistoric birds
    in practice before they alight
    So men become gods
    in the small village
    of Ilukwewa
    Ganesh in pink,
                   in yellow,
    in elephant darkness
    His simplest shrine
    a drawing of him
    lime chalk
    on a grey slate
    All this glory
    preparing us for Anuradhapura
    its night faith
    A city with the lap
    and spell of a river
    Families below trees
    around the heart of a fire
    tributaries
    from the small villages
    of the dry zone
    Circling the dagoba
    in a clockwise hum and chant,
    bowls of lit coal
    above their heads
    whispering bare feet
    Our flutter and drift
    in the tow of this river

The First Rule of Sinhalese Architecture
    Never build three doors
    in a straight line
    A devil might rush
    through them
    deep into your house,
    into your life

The Medieval Coast
    A village of stone-cutters. A village of soothsayers.
    Men who burrow into the earth in search of gems.
    Circus in-laws who pyramid themselves into trees.
    Home life. A fear of distance along the southern coast.
    Every stone-cutter has his secret mark, angle of his chisel.
    In the village of soothsayers
    bones of a familiar animal
    guide interpretations.
    This wisdom extends no more than thirty miles.

Buried 2
    i
    We smuggled the tooth of the Buddha
    from temple to temple for five hundred years,
    1300–1800.
    Once we buried our libraries
    under the great medicinal trees
    which the invaders burned
    —when we lost the books,
    the poems of science, invocations.
    The tooth picked from the hot loam
    and hidden in our hair and buried again
    within the rapids of a river.
    When they left we swam down to it
    and carried it away in our hair.
    ii
    By the 8th century our rough harbours
    had already drowned Persian ships
    We drove cylinders into the earth
    to discover previous horizons
    In the dry zone we climbed great rocks
    and rose out of the landscape
    Where we saw forests
    the king saw water gardens
    an ordered river’s path circling
    and falling,
        he could almost see
    the silver light of it
    come rushing towards us
    iii
    The poets wrote their stories on rock and leaf
    to celebrate the work of the day,
    the shadow pleasures of night.
    Kanakara
, they said.
    Tharu piri
…
    They slept, famous, in palace courtyards
    then hid within forests when they were hunted
    for composing the arts of love and science
    while there was war to celebrate.
    They were revealed in their darknesses
    —as if a torch