Athula's Demise Poem by Vihanga Perera

Forty years later, Nimalasiri died
After being summoned to the party head's room
In the middle of the night.
He had collapsed and passed out.
Upon admission he was already gone without a doubt.
Nimalasiri -the last scene of your last act:
Poignant. Pathetic. Speculation on fact.

I think of 69,70, April 1971.
You -one of the fab, marching to and fro,
Instilling in chosen youth sentiment and will
And the El Dorado of the coming revolution
Which, when it came, came as a bitter-sweet pill.
In the party annals, you were now a traitor, a turncoat
Who to wear the coat had a body but a soulless back.

A pre-revolution hero who turned meek at the firing line.
In that way and many others - a modern day Frankenstein.

And forty years on,
One dark night you were forced to embrace
And kiss certain death you once cheated
-In an unlikely colossal palatial room
In the plush seaside suburb of a man whose rule
Was now beginning to dissolve like an inevitable mountain -
Perhaps, you provoked him some way,
Hinting at some later day rebellion

-Something you had in you the world
Had robbed from you in how they wrote your name -

That that leader's gaze struck you like a bolt
And brought you, Nimalasiri -Athula -
And your pulses to a final halt.

- March 2019