Booksology What do we require? The exploration of that which is bare and essential is not just a question for the monastically-inclined. It is beautifully and expressively cast as a moral and ethical question asked by those who seek to conserve: the protectors, the stewards, the inheritors, the conservationists. . . perhaps even those that want to save the world. While the term “postcolonialism” has certain connotations and its own associated baggage, writer and longtime friend Ramya Jirasinghe is absolutely a postcolonial poet and playwright in the sense that mastery of literature is inseparable from mastery of how we relate to ourselves and to others—particularly in the Aristotelian or Confucian sense of behaving morally and taking on the habitual being of thinking ethically.
Such considerations are inevitable when one looks at the natural world, its ongoing exploitation and ravaging, and deliberations on what constitutes a just and balanced rectification. Requisites (2025), published by Mica Press & Campanula Books, is an anthology of beautiful poems that effortlessly combines Buddhist themes with reflections on our interaction with nature. It is, as with much good poetry, an inquiry and exploration of the human experience.
The poetry in this volume is both rooted in Jirasinghe’s mastery of imagery and impeccable English; which as many poets know is not simply about technical proficiency or even the ability to choose the right words, but how to channel the words, to grasp their feel, to engage with them in an almost physical way. Many devices, schemes, and techniques that populate Jirasinghe’s poetic structures have connotations of touch, sight, or otherwise engagement with the five sense doors. They render reading a physical act beyond simple sight. We are also meant to feel, smell, hear, and taste. And in doing so, we consume, constantly, while churning over exactly what of and in the world that we take from Jirasinghe’s book.
Consider her contents, segments of poetry which invoke the imagery of a monk’s outfit. Each section has its own poems (all the sections’ titles are capitalized): OUTER ROBE, INNER ROBE, CLOAK FOR WINTER, and BOWL. Then it is suddenly punctuated by a special segment and also the clearest Buddhist reference; THE MIDDLE PATH. The Middle Path is in the midmost of the anthology, a poem in its own right along with two others; before it opens into its remaining sections: RAZOR, NEEDLE & THREAD, WATER STRAINER, and BELT. The austere imagery conjured up by these titles belie the richness and depth of her language.
Every poem from Jirasinghe is worth quoting in its entirety, but this review seeks to reflect rather than regurgitate. The experience of reading the full array of intricately smithed meters, stanzas, and devices is obviously best when the entire book is in the reader’s hands. Nevertheless, Jirasinghe’s magnificent poems in her middle section are worth quoting in full. This is THE MIDDLE PATH:
some understood the fire sermon, but that is not for novices.we do mock the modern poet’s vision of this wastelandfor us slick oil that floats on waves is our sweet licensewe climb up steps to small flatsthinking we will not be undone
this road calls for stillinga stripping of thought and word and deedall journeys are for standing in one placewe may hang on to these eight requisites butthe practice is circular we must discardthe requisites before we carry them
beautiful heart listen: the green leaves on mountain slopesring out like bells still waters flow reeds bend tothe waiting wind. eternity is the unclenched fist.
nothing held returns the caged lark to the skyfree with the heart kindharmless, the heart learns rapture
from here we build the world anew
My sense of Jirasinghe’s writing is that she allows the various influences of her life (which could range from her love of nature to her experience of motherhood to her reverence for the Buddhist tradition) to suffuse her poetry. Although it is a poem in and of itself, “The Middle Path” also functions as a section in Requisites, so it has two other poems, “ritual” and “looking into this bowl again.” It would be worth quoting both of them, as well, in full. This is “ritual:”
she is thus one and many and all like her who have borne on their back
the weight of love for the flesh she has borne, the flesh that bore herand the flesh that devours her, she will appease, she will redeem she will
satiate. she stirs. we peer in with her, watch with each turn porridge,burgoo, pottage samp, grits, polenta, gruel spoonful swirlinto the vortex. this will be her
offering to gods who have forsaken her.this is breakfast for a thousandsuns that will rise with her and seek herto make sense of the world it has lit
she is he she it they everyone everytime who dine from themrivers begin here
from their hearts pour soft rain, the quiet moment, the cool recess.they ladle succour into a bowl and wipe their brow
we breath in relief; theirs a ritual as necessary as thearrival of spring. we may hope the best for the world
And this is her final poem of the section, “looking into this bowl again.”
let us return to the humble bowl we started with
wrapped round a swirling mass of knotted roots
old feuds new fears of days of lackexodus and invasionwe watch, us armchair critics, such is our privilege,
a boy on the screen waves a flap of his cheek in our facespushes his hand through the pixels. beforewe can switch channels, grabs our fattened turkey and fleesthis bowl: pewter, iron, steel, copper, clayis swilling with unmentionables, some of us gag
some are certain now: this journeyupstream is no longer for pickingwhen we have had enoughhave weat least you and me
Such is the bare and raw power of Jirasinghe’s verses, calm and measured yet primal in its energy, almost like a feminine reservoir of limitless power, that they deserve thoughtful and considered reflection. From beginning to end, her poetry is a tribute to the Buddhist solution to our self-destruction and damage to Mother Nature—to want less and want better. To hope and dream with that mindfulness that inevitably opens the heart and sympathy for the world rather than turning inward into self-interested neurosis.
Much like her past writing, the call to reflect on how we relate to the world is completely absent of judgmentalism or self-righteousness. As the book’s self-understanding and titled structure indicates, Requisites is simply bare, naked in a sense. It is a compendium of vulnerability that offers only what needs to be offered, and leaves it to us, the readers, to take the bundle of joy and tears in our arms. What we do with it is, as with all morally responsible choices, up to us.
Ramya Jirasinghe’s Water for Kings: A Sri Lankan Writer’s Poetic Vision and CautionBook Review: Yin Mountain: The Immortal Poetry of Three Daoist WomenTensions Between Literary Creation and Buddhist Practice—Ramya Jirasinghe Talks about Poetry, Dharma, and Why She Writes
