Jean Arasanayagam's Poem: Apocalypse

Background to Apocalypse 83’

Jean Arasanayagam wrote this poem to commemorate the Black July Riots. Fifteen Sri Lankan army soldiers were ambushed and killed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In response, Sinhala mob attacked and killed between four hundred and three thousand Tamils in Colombo and the surrounding countryside, in July 1983. Black July is generally regarded as the start of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

References:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/3090111.stm

Apocalypse

Jean  Arasanayagam

Gutted houses

 Gutted lives

Charred wood

Charred flesh

Shattered brick

Shattered glass

Hammer blows of fists

Iron rods

Breaking walls

Breaking doors

Clubs, poles

Pulped flesh smoke choked breath

 Slashed limbs, stab wounds, human

Torches blazing in the streets

Eyes wild frenzied of the mob brutal

Cries blood curdling screams human

Bloodhounds scenting alien blood

Marauding gangs stalking the innocent

Blood wells up, flows disgorged

From gashed fountains and springs

In charred gardens

Wine dark blood streams

In sunlit air crimson buds

 Newly open swiftly crumple

Pervasive odour of scorched

Flesh charred and blackened

Stumps like broken statuary

Strewn on burnt out lawns

Flames soar licking hot with pulsing tongue

Each edifice consumed by fires of hate

Lust for death makes rapid panthers

 Springing from dark lairs

Flanks freshly steaming with the heat

Of hunt the unarmed defeated

Skulk in jungles fleeing from

The orgiastic love for death

Hiding among the 'mana' grasses, thorn

Thickets tea bushes or seeking

Cover in homes that grant temporary

Asylum to those who crossed

A borderline to this brief safety

We are prisoners of fear

 Crouching in dark locked rooms

Drawing each breath in blood

Heart leaping at each

Closer murderous cry,

Some fall at doorsteps as they flee

Stabbed to the heart, axed down

And poled frail birds whose wings

Foiled in their flight were crushed,

Melted like wax in mounting fires.

Yet whom they destroy?

Those who to each other are unknown

Who know not nor will ever know

 Each others histories or personal

Loves and hates, no longer to equate

A child's toy with a human life

As cradles burn

As beds of lovers go up in flames

The only ecstasy is death

Bathed in the blood of murderer

Even the guilty now absolved

Of every sin, become saints.

Whom do we destroy?

Wrenching apart like broken fingers

Fractured bones unclasped from palm,

They go back to their lairs and dens

Piled with loot clothe themselves in

Other skins.

They have destroyed themselves

Yet do not know it

Waiting for the next call

To stream into the streets with burning

Brands and bombs and clubs and poles

They make their gleeful beds on carnage.

In each man who is alien

To their tongue and speech

They see both enemy and prey.

Within the flames of burning cities

Writhe and twist their purgatorial souls

Within the fire great monsters rise

Hulks of dark brutal giants bruited

Against the fearful midget-kind diminished

By fear, who make no stand, no gesture of defence.

What chance, what hope

When all is wrecked.

A dead body floats

In the calm waters of the lake,

Beaten and mutilated,

Beggars still hold out their empty palms

To all who pass, they alone in poverty can see

No difference.

Perished on pyres with rituals of hate

Or immolated within the walls of burning rooms

A few survivors hold in their hands

Corpses of husbands, wives and children

Pieces of charred and broken brick.

Here there is no longer any home

For those of alien breed. 

Jean Arasanayagam | 'Apocalypse 83'

Literary Readings-A critical analysis of the poem

Gutted houses

 Gutted lives

(Repetitive lines for magnification)

'Gutted' Sound imagery

Harsh consonants depicting landscape of violence

 First four lines of Poem: Language reduced-imitating lack of common language between Sinhalese and Tamils

 "Eyes Wild" Inverted syntax-to  focus on the physicality of the mob and its victims to emphasise the unthinking nature of maddened humanity

 'In each man who is alien

To their tongue and speech'

Diction-use of ‘alien’ to suggest outsider status of one race over another in Sri Lanka.

'In sunlit air crimson buds'Use of nature imagery-conflating actual natural buds of flowers with the blood of victims

'Bloodhounds' Animal imagery to suggest the idea of animalistic actions of the mob

'A borderline to this brief safety' Use of physical spaces and lines to suggest the divisions within Sri Lanka

'We are prisoners of fear' Movement from distant persona to a universal ‘we’

'Closer murderous cry, 'Use of onomatopoeia to suggest the soundscapes of horror-a cry reverberating through rooms and in history

'Some fall at doorsteps as they flee

Stabbed to the heart, axed down' 

Use of contrasts; the fall suggests an accident and yet ironically, the reason for the falling is made clear within the next line; not an accident and a gentle falling, but ‘stabbed’ to the heart. The fall is reminiscent of the deliberate way countries and people use words to twist reality; falling a result of gentle accident rather than murderous fury. Twis

'Yet whom they destroy?

Those who to each other are unknown Who know not nor will ever know'

Use of pronouns rather than ethnic identities to suggest the cycle of violence affects everyone.

 Ironic that cities are depicted as ‘lairs’ or ‘purgatory’. The physical landscape takes on a nightmarish quality to suggest that contested lands become purgatorial through carnage and man’s rapacious actions