The Surviving Strings Poem by Vihanga Perera

The song that was written for you
On a guitar with just four surviving strings
— For over a decade that bane of an instrument lay
Serene among cobwebs, debris and distant things —
You said, you don't want to hear; my voice is not how a songmaker sings.

That song, so, I left on a table to my right and kept on it
An empty glass for weight as for the night I slipped
Among blankets to sleep. Let my memory,
Overtoxicated in soft slumber, carry me to powerful visions of you
And me — not us, but us — in swerving surcharged movement deep.

That song — that paper — somehow had fallen and had
Been swept away among unswept random dust.
I pick it and place it where I'd left it again, so that
To sing it I can, though that moment was past: Cos
You live and re-live what you want to live; make it, in that way, hold and last.

So, that what I compose would be of meaning still,
Though you retain the right to write me ill.