What do we require? The exploration of that which is bare and essential is not just a question for the monastically-inclined. It is beautifully and expressively cast as a moral and ethical question asked by those who seek to conserve: the protectors, the stewards, the inheritors, the conservationists. . . perhaps even those that want to save the world. While the term “postcolonialism” has certain connotations and its own associated baggage, writer and longtime friend Ramya Jirasinghe is absolutely a postcolonial poet and playwright in the sense that mastery of literature is inseparable from mastery of how we relate to ourselves and to others—particularly in the Aristotelian or Confucian sense of behaving morally and taking on the habitual being of thinking ethically.

Such considerations are inevitable when one looks at the natural world, its ongoing exploitation and ravaging, and deliberations on what constitutes a just and balanced rectification. Requisites (2025), published by Mica Press & Campanula Books, is an anthology of beautiful poems that effortlessly combines Buddhist themes with reflections on our interaction with nature. It is, as with much good poetry, an inquiry and exploration of the human experience.

The poetry in this volume is both rooted in Jirasinghe’s mastery of imagery and impeccable English; which as many poets know is not simply about technical proficiency or even the ability to choose the right words, but how to channel the words, to grasp their feel, to engage with them in an almost physical way. Many devices, schemes, and techniques that populate Jirasinghe’s poetic structures have connotations of touch, sight, or otherwise engagement with the five sense doors. They render reading a physical act beyond simple sight. We are also meant to feel, smell, hear, and taste. And in doing so, we consume, constantly, while churning over exactly what of and in the world that we take from Jirasinghe’s book.

Consider her contents, segments of poetry which invoke the imagery of a monk’s outfit. Each section has its own poems (all the sections’ titles are capitalized): OUTER ROBE, INNER ROBE, CLOAK FOR WINTER, and BOWL. Then it is suddenly punctuated by a special segment and also the clearest Buddhist reference; THE MIDDLE PATH. The Middle Path is in the midmost of the anthology, a poem in its own right along with two others; before it opens into its remaining sections: RAZOR, NEEDLE & THREAD, WATER STRAINER, and BELT. The austere imagery conjured up by these titles belie the richness and depth of her language.

Every poem from Jirasinghe is worth quoting in its entirety, but this review seeks to reflect rather than regurgitate. The experience of reading the full array of intricately smithed meters, stanzas, and devices is obviously best when the entire book is in the reader’s hands. Nevertheless, Jirasinghe’s magnificent poems in her middle section are worth quoting in full. This is THE MIDDLE PATH:

some understood the fire sermon, but that is not for novices.
we do mock the modern poet’s vision of this wasteland
for us slick oil that floats on waves is our sweet license
we climb up steps to small flats
thinking we will not be undone

this road calls for stilling
a stripping of thought and word and deed
all journeys are for standing in one place
we may hang on to these eight requisites but
the practice is circular we must discard
the requisites before we carry them

beautiful heart listen: the green leaves on mountain slopes
ring out like bells still waters flow reeds bend to
the waiting wind. eternity is the unclenched fist.

nothing held returns the caged lark to the sky
free with the heart kind
harmless, the heart learns rapture

from here we build the world anew

My sense of Jirasinghe’s writing is that she allows the various influences of her life (which could range from her love of nature to her experience of motherhood to her reverence for the Buddhist tradition) to suffuse her poetry. Although it is a poem in and of itself, “The Middle Path” also functions as a section in Requisites, so it has two other poems, “ritual” and “looking into this bowl again.” It would be worth quoting both of them, as well, in full. This is “ritual:”

she is thus one and many and all like her who have borne on their back

the weight of love for the flesh she has borne, the flesh that bore her
and the flesh that devours her, she will appease, she will redeem she will

satiate. she stirs. we peer in with her, watch with each turn porridge,
burgoo, pottage samp, grits, polenta, gruel spoonful swirl
into the vortex. this will be her

offering to gods who have forsaken her.
this is breakfast for a thousand
suns that will rise with her and seek her
to make sense of the world it has lit

she is he she it they everyone everytime who dine from them
rivers begin here

from their hearts pour soft rain, the quiet moment, the cool recess.
they ladle succour into a bowl and wipe their brow

we breath in relief; theirs a ritual as necessary as the
arrival of spring. we may hope the best for the world

And this is her final poem of the section, “looking into this bowl again.”

let us return to the humble bowl we started with

wrapped round a swirling mass of knotted roots

old feuds new fears of days of lack
exodus and invasion
we watch, us armchair critics, such is our privilege,

a boy on the screen waves a flap of his cheek in our faces
pushes his hand through the pixels. before
we can switch channels, grabs our fattened turkey and flees
this bowl: pewter, iron, steel, copper, clay
is swilling with unmentionables, some of us gag

some are certain now: this journey
upstream is no longer for picking
when we have had enough
have we
at least you and me

Such is the bare and raw power of Jirasinghe’s verses, calm and measured yet primal in its energy, almost like a feminine reservoir of limitless power, that they deserve thoughtful and considered reflection. From beginning to end, her poetry is a tribute to the Buddhist solution to our self-destruction and damage to Mother Nature—to want less and want better. To hope and dream with that mindfulness that inevitably opens the heart and sympathy for the world rather than turning inward into self-interested neurosis.

Much like her past writing, the call to reflect on how we relate to the world is completely absent of judgmentalism or self-righteousness. As the book’s self-understanding and titled structure indicates, Requisites is simply bare, naked in a sense. It is a compendium of vulnerability that offers only what needs to be offered, and leaves it to us, the readers, to take the bundle of joy and tears in our arms. What we do with it is, as with all morally responsible choices, up to us.

Related features from BDG

Ramya Jirasinghe’s Water for Kings: A Sri Lankan Writer’s Poetic Vision and Caution
Book Review: Yin Mountain: The Immortal Poetry of Three Daoist Women
Tensions Between Literary Creation and Buddhist Practice—Ramya Jirasinghe Talks about Poetry, Dharma, and Why She Writes