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Saturday, September 10, 2022

QUEEN OF CEYLON

by Indran Amirthanayagam




The Queen is dead. This afternoon

at Balmoral Castle, on the eighth

of September. We mourn her

 

throughout the Commonwealth

and much of the planet. This is

no easy passing, from the world

 

before and the world to come.

When she assumed her brief

India and Ceylon had just won

 

their latest independence. 

When she traveled to Ceylon 

in 1954 to see the fledgling 

 

new nation she charmed 

everyone she met, from mahout 

to rickshaw driver to staff 

 

at the Queen's Hotel

in Kandy. I imagine

she stayed at Galle Face too,

 

and Sir Chittampalam

Gardiner led the royal couple

to their rooms. Dignity

 

is the word. Quiet resolve.

Memory of how Britain

survived the Blitz, how

 

it let go of its imperial

arrogance to later become

part of Europe, one among

 

equals—how it lost great

comics to homogenization

of the transatlantic


championing of money

above all values. She

saw Monty Python,

 

Dave Allen, the Two 

Ronnies, Peter Sellers,

and other geniuses on stage, 

 

in music, on television,  

leave their wit in history

books of a golden age.

 

She lived through many

and leaves us now to balance 

our nostalgia against 

 

the return of a would-be 

iron lady to Downing Street.

God forbid Truss may

 

just bring out the artists

again, born in suffering,

a new Mersey sound,

 

a Notting Hill dub,

English revolution,

Commonwealth invasion.



Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.