Waking is Another Dream: Poems on the Genocide in Eelam

What happened between 8 and 18 May 2009 in Eelam? Did no one write diaries? Did no one have cameras? Were there no poets there? Not a single artist? Whatever happened on that last day? What is the poetry that can emerge from a ‘wounded landmass’ where ‘no bird is able to fly’, where people ‘ate death’?

Nobody answered our questions. To ask one of the dead, at least, I went to the mortuary. My corpse lay there, The ribcage apart and in place of the heart there was a grinding stone.

Five frontline Tamil poets—Cheran, Jayapalan, Yesurasa, Latha, Ravikumar—lament the loss of their land, their language and thousands of people. They chronicle the people who have learnt to pose for hours clutching with ease the barbed wire without getting pricked.

Translated into English for the first time by Meena Kandasamy and Ravi Shanker, these introspective poems tell us how and why ‘waking is another dream’ in Sri Lanka.