Sri Lankan Schoolroom.

Sri Lankan Schoolroom

   Traipsing across sports grounds
   picked clean by equator sun
   we visit my father's school,
   long-distance callers
   at the museum of memory.

   My father points out the places
   where, giggling, his friends once sat,
   names that belong to old men
   in London and Toronto now, names
   that could barely fit behind these desks.

   His teacher remains unchanged.
   Paper-dry voice crackling
   he dictates the rites of duty and decorum,
   the triumph of courtesy and reason
   over the casual accident of race.

   It is Jaffna, 1983.

   It is one day in a long, hot summer.

   It is one day, seconds away from war.

   Decades from now, this is all that I'll remember
   of that visit to that country:
   The sand dust in the air,
   the sun, bleaching dry the shutters,
   and the walls, empty of pictures,
   not even a map of the world.

--Pireeni Sundaralingam

Pireeni Sundaralingam was born in Sri Lanka and is a recipient of PEN USA's Rosenthal Fellowship. Her new album, "Bridge Across the Blue, "uses poetry and music to chart the blues stories of different immigrant communities in the U.S. Her website is www.wordandviolin.com.