Sunday Times 2
If you can keep your head above you…
This columnist this Sunday is going from prose to verse.
Today, in the context of the times, we attempt to parody Rudyard Kipling’s IF with sincere apologies to Kipling and all true poets; granting to ourselves a journalistic licence.
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are claiming that you are locked up
To save you from dying with the whole blessed nation
And if you are aware that they had no other option
Like all leaders of potty and dotty nations
Who locked up their people claiming very good reasons
Don’t go berserk for trying to take you for a sucker.
If you keep cool your head and tongue on leash
For the high and mighty are beyond your reach
You may outlive the Covid-19 to fight Covid-20.
*****
Doctors say: Be a good boy and lead a good life
Wash your hands, wear masks, be at home — don’t roam
Washing hands is easy, masks cannot be found but finding a home
is impossible if you don’t have one.
Doctors are smart and find solutions that are not there,
GMOA kind simply pluck them out from the air:
When the sick rushed OPDs with deadly Dengue like mules
Docs assured them: Don’t worry, we will Work-to-Rules.
******
Khakied men on TV are proud, effusive and debonair
Claim of winning a war never fought and extremely rare
With an enemy unseen, the Covid virus
Harder to kill than a stampeding hippopotamus
Can’t kill it with Trump’s recommended hydroxychlorophine
But they did it at Diyatalawa and army camps with simple quarantines
All praise they say to their very Big Big Chief
Without him Sri Lanka will be wallowing in grief.
*****
He also won the 30-year war on terror with effortless ease
And now the Virus War, in about 30 days may cease
But who won wars and who won peace is a long, long story
It will be decided if at all in time by history.
*****
Politics change with changing times;
Rally round the Lion Flag is now the
Pohottuwa Rhyme.
*****
The call now is: United we stand:
divided we fall.
But divided, didn’t we stand for 72 years
And we did have chaos but also democracy
United, we will have stability, security and may be autocracy
And Lanka could end as a Demo-no-Crazy.
*****
If you still have a head above you
And want to come out of this Covid imbroglio
Use reason with science like the WHO
Hold your head high, stand up on your feet not knees for everything just and human
Then you can call yourself truly Sri Lankan.
*****
Politics change with changing times;
Rally round the Lion Flag is now the
Pohottuwa Rhyme.
The call now is: United we stand :
divided we fall.
But divided, didn’t we stand for 72 years
And we did have chaos but also democracy
United, we will have stability, security andmay be an autocracy
And Lanka could end as a Demo- no- Crazy.
*****
If you have a head above you
And want to come out of this imbroglio
Use reason with science: like the WHO
*****
Hold your head high, stand up on your feet not knees for everything human
Then you can call yourself a truly Sri Lankan.
(Gamini Weerakoon is a former editor of The Sunday Island,
The Island and Consulting Editor
of the Sunday Leader.)