White Blindness - Pireeni Sundaralingam

My country is a white blindness,
an absence of newsprint,
a vacuum of words,
the falling snow of radio static.

But where is there left
for me to pour out my secrets?

I will dig graves deep in the earth for them.
I will tear holes in the white silence of the page
and bury the words of witness
deep in the tomb of the text.

Let them bear fruit there,
let the sprouting grasses shout out their secrets,
let the blade-cut reeds blare out their names.

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Pireeni Sundaralingam (21st century) Sri Lanka
Source: UniVerse
First published in Cyphers Issue 53, 2002 (Ireland)