In his latest collection Avidyā, Vidyan Ravinthiran offers a poem titled 'Autumn' that directly engages with Keats's famous ode, written over two centuries earlier. The England-born Sri Lankan poet writes from a 21st-century perspective, his work coloured by Sri Lanka's colonial past, civil war, and the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
The poem opens with fallen yellow leaves flaring red, evoking embers and chilli-flakes, but quickly turns to the burning of the Jaffna Public Library in 1981. This biblioclasm, carried out by a mob including police and paramilitaries, destroyed one of Asia's largest libraries and a major Tamil cultural centre. The 'foreign dead' and 'phantasms' that steal into peaceful lives speak 'in a tongue I never learned', highlighting the poet's distance from the traumatic past.
Ravinthiran's imagery shifts from violence to domesticity: a garden, a spade of blood meal, and the smell of chicken curry floating to Walden Pond. This blend of the personal and historical, with references to Thoreau's retreat, suggests a sensuous, amused resistance. The poet's cookery, including instant chilli-flakes, acknowledges cultural compromise while offering comfort.
The poem's structure mirrors Keats's 11-line stanza, but Ravinthiran complicates its balance. A clear ABAB quatrain gives way to looser rhymes. Stanza two introduces a cardinal swooping like a struck match, with mosquitoes eddying like opinion—a concrete-abstract simile that recalls Keats's own vivid imagery. The poem closes with reflections on clouds, migration, and beauty's frailty, questioning the purpose of wings and songs amid barbed wire.
Critics note that 'Autumn' exemplifies the exploratory kind of contemporary poetry, touring the flames of history in a relaxed, self-effacing manner. The subtitle denotes the time and distance between Keats's 1819 ode and Ravinthiran's work, bridging two centuries of change, from Peterloo to Sri Lanka's troubled independence and civil strife.
