An Introduction to Moths and Fireflies by Vidujith Vithanage

The title of Vidujith Vithange’s collection of poems, extracts, aphorisms and paintings Moths and Fireflies is intriguing enough in itself for someone browsing through a shelf of books in a book store to pause and pick the book up for a second look. Both moths and fire flies are creatures of the night; while one is considered a pestilence-bearing poor cousin of its showier diurnal relative the butterfly, the firefly is often a welcomed sight that evokes a smile in both the young and the old. The colour and the text type used in the cover of the book facilitate mystery the poet is aiming at through the selection of the title.

The book has a subtitle: “Fabled Metanoia of the Living.” The term metanoia refers to a change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion. Fittingly, the content of the book, fifty-two poems, deals with life changing events which the writer lists under three headings:

1.     Tragedy of Hits (poems 01-12)

2.     Thoughts Passing by (poems 13-33)

3.     Metamorphosis (poems 34-52) 

In the preface, Vithanage states that composition of poems is his way of reconciling with his “internal conflicts and realizations” when he is at “crossroads” of his life. The aphorisms/ extracts and the sketches that accompany almost all the poems in the book add to the reading experience. Sometimes, they also clue the reader in on what the poet is trying to say in more lay terms. All in all, the collection deals with themes such as terror, war, peace, life, death, divine will, politics, love, hope, heroism, and reason. Rain is a recurrent motif in this collection. 

Terror, War and Peace

The aptly named first section deals with life-altering tragedies, memory, fate and survival. The understated pathos in the first poem “The Curfew” is one of my favourites in the collection. The poet uses the interplay between the security personnel and the bereaved to underscore not only the profound sense of loss the man is feeling at the death of someone near and dear to him but also the human element in the men in uniforms. When the poetic persona offers the security personnel a death certificate in lieu of a curfew pass he sees the “grin melt into compassion”. However, in “Heavy Rains” deals with a disillusioned disabled soldier who has “given all to this land” to guard it against “armed terror” but left with nothing but “memories sweet” that “[b]lossom in dust”.  It hints at an ungrateful nation that has conveniently forgotten the contribution made by the armed forces to keep them safe in their most desperate hour. Continuing the same to topic in “Horrors Unknown” the poetic persona who had experienced a “[n]ightmare, three decades long”  and the subsequent peace wishes fervently for “[y]et another” to never to occur. In “Easter 2019” which the poet prefaces with Psalm: Mathew 5:43-48 which advocates the often quoted and much lauded Christian quality of loving one’s enemy, the poetic persona is resolved to hold on to his “faith” and allow God to be the judge for that “and many more crimes cold”.  

Looking at the historical military campaigns in “Ad Coronam Thermopylae (crown at Thermopylae)” the poet turns to the legend of the fabled Spartan Leonidas who is often considered to be synonymous with courage, heroism and self-sacrifice. The poetic persona sees war as an exercise set afoot by swollen egos of the invader which in the end leaves nothing but dust. However, they also offer men like Leonidas an opportunity to test their leadership qualities. The poetic persona urges the reader to remember that.  Yet, in “Stirred at Heart” the poetic persona questions the idea of heroism by presenting pictures of heroes as “grey men breathing” walking “the earth” – they are neither white nor black.  

Most human inventions are used to wage war with one another: the wheel, Vithanage says, as it turned emitted “[g]roans and mourns – barely heard.” It was the reason why Prince Siddhartha, “a prince from a land of east,” attempted to stop the wheel of Samsara which he thought as something that “burdened all that breathed/ [e]xtremes brought no fruits sweet” and resulted only in “agony bitter at rope’s end.”    

In contrast, in “Devilish Phase” the poet is engaged in a war against his inner demons: “All men hide devils in a closet down deep”. Continuing along the theme of personal battles, in “What I feel …”, the poetic persona who feels hemmed in is engaged in a battle with a judgmental society.  

As an answer to all the conflicts he has witnessed directly and indirectly, in “What if…” the poetic persona dreams of a world where there was no more “jealousy and hatred …/[f]estering within our souls”. It is a world in which human beings have stopped building “armor and walls” and in their place they are “laying bridges” so that “[n]o soul will starve or suffer anymore”.  

Life, Death and the Divine Will

In “Survived - Titanic”, the poetic persona tells the reader that his memory of the Titanic instead of fading with time gets “stronger with each passing year/ [w]ith every detail intact”. Why? One may ask. Was it because it had become a metaphor for his awareness of human frailty and overweening pride that increased with the increasing years? The poem reverses its course in the last stanza when Vithanage delegates the agency in orchestrating the tragedy to Fate instead of humans. Still preoccupied with the idea of the role in Fate, in “Mother’s Agony,” a young mother “weeps for the flesh of her flesh” and asks God to let her “fade” so that her child may “thrive”. In the last line a “profound whisper” is articulating a question that many throughout the ages have asked: “was it God’s scheme at play?” The same question is raised regarding the subject of the Easter 2019 incident when the poetic persona raises his bewildered traumatized eyes to the heavens and asks, “Was it fair, Oh lord?”  Yet, in “Let Them Hatch”, the last poem in the first section, the poetic persona takes the listener to task for not having patience and questioning the divine will. Echoing the well-known lines in the Bible the poetic persona says that the verdict would take “its own sweet time” to ripen.

However, the poet challenges this conclusion in the very first poem of the second section in which he urges a more active approach to understanding the Divine Will when he says “[t]o ‘know’ is the wisdom” and urges not to believe “[m]eekly, what we’d been told.” Vithanage’s collection is riddled with contradictory thoughts highlighting the nonlinear fashion in which the human mind works. In “A Stoic’s Melancholy,” the 28^th poem in the collection, the poetic persona once again concludes that instead of questioning one needs to learn to accept: “acceptance – a bliss,” he concludes.    

“A leaf on Float” sees life as something that is outside one’s free will: the individual is caught in something much larger than himself. Pushing the same line of argument, in “Mutare Venire (Change to Come),” the first poem of the 3^rd section of the collection subtitled Metamorphosis, the poet seems to suggest that accepting change as an inevitable part of life and learning to make the best of use of it is the best policy. “Phoenix in Flame” and “Fire-Ashes-Wind”,  too, urge the reader to see death/change as a positive regenerative phase of an endless cycle; it is the attitude one has towards death that needs changing, not the event itself. In “Greener Pastures Awaits”, a must-read poem in the selection, existence is a journey. One has to be “wise to know time’s call or lose/ [w]hen frames of thoughts forge cages to hold”. One has to take one’s “leave calmly or cease/ [t]he fire within, burning bereft a pause.”

Yet, in “Plight of Saul and Isilur’s Bane” Vitanage states that our lives are results of “chances and choices made” by us. Following the same line of argument of self-will and human agency, the little boy in “Little Johnny” asks, “Can’t I just be happy?/ [b]y doing what I please.” The last line is a strident call for freedom: “Life is mine! Not your dream to live.” One might question whether this is a too simplistic approach to the operations of power in any given society. After all it was no lesser person than the Metaphysical poet John Donne that famously proclaimed that “No man is an island”. In “A Ride in the Plains,” the poet concludes that “[l]ife well lived ain’t the years counted” but precious moments “cherished deep” which leave no regrets. Hence, in “A Wireless World” the poet laments that we have isolated ourselves in islands as a result of the technological advancements built first to link human beings; therefore, the poetic persona in “A Gush of Wind” yearns to go back to a more leisurely lifestyle. Consequently, one might say that on the issue of Vitanage’s take on human agency and self-will vs. divine plan, the jury is still out.     

One of my favourites in the collection is “Act of Creation”. In it Vithanage attempts to illustrates the minuscule-ness of human history when set against the vast canvass of universal history, meaningless of our adherence to “tongues – tribes – [and] rituals” and futility of our insistence on “reality”. He seems to posit that an all-encompassing homogenous heart/faith dominated attempt at understanding existence might yield better results when it comes to understanding being and in extension becoming. In “Envious Oceans”, too, the poet lets the reader see how puny even the mightiest creations of the mankind are when matched with the awful powers of nature. However, the poetic persona in the form of the mighty ocean that makes “[s]ailors tremble” at his “wrath” is envious of the more serene river whose life ends in the ocean. This reading is quite interesting if one is to consider the ocean as the divine and the river as the mortal. Reading this poem, I was reminded of the great Achilles’ conversation with King Priam towards the end of The Iliad in which the hero says that gods envy humans for our mortality and our capacity to feel.  

Rain

“Masks in Monsoon,” “Heavy Rains,” and “Drops or rain” are a few of the poems that feature the recurring motif of rain in Vithanage’s collection. In “Masks of Monsson” the poet deals with an interaction between the rich and the poor in an urban setting during pandemic. For the rich the lockdown sound “like a vacation” and the “[r]ains just made them [feel] cozier” whereas for the “boy, tanned, lean/ [s]oaked” it was a period of added stress. While the occupants of the luxury vehicles whose “mammoth wheel” he was attempting to change in the rain, sat inside oblivious to his discomfort, it is the nuts that held the inanimate wheel that yielded “to his will/ [a]s if steel knew his pain.”   

Politics

The poets loathing of politics in Sri Lanka is so succinctly illustrated in “The House in Colombo” where he with a few words denudes nearly 7 decades of party politics that had bleed the country dry. However, one may ask whether the voters are not similarly culpable as the rulers are nothing but an accentuated cross-section of the general populous itself. In “What I feel…” the poet explores the classic conflict between the individual and society. He feels hemmed in to the extent that he asks, “Does it really matter? What I feel…” In “Plight of Saul and Isilur’s Bane” Vitanage brings the Biblical figure Saul and Tolikn’s Isildur together to illustrate that power, in whoever’s hand it may be, ultimately corrupts.

In “A Play of Masses,” the poet uses a moment in Roman history to illustrate the power of the spoken (or written) word. It really does not matter who is right or wrong; it is the one who is best at rhetoric that ultimately manages to rouse the hoi polloi. Vithanage’s take on the afore said category might be called by some as elitist; yet, looking at the way recent events of Sri Lankan history have unfolded and the role of the spoken and written word in them, I feel the poet makes a valid argument.  

Love, Hope and Heroism

In “Love Unspoken” the poetic persona concludes love to be “[h]eart’s bane, words strain”; yet, he wishes it to be “a misery all men seek” underscoring the necessity of love as a fundamental essence that underpins the very framework of human existence. In “Compromised Living” too Vithanage claims that it is in our nature to “be daring against all odds/ [t]o bravely go into uncharted realms” where “[d]arkest corners may unveil the truest light.”

In “Heroes,” my favourite in the collection, the poet shares with the reader his dream of becoming a hero of his time. According to him, the type of heroes that “matter the most/ [l]ie” on bare earth without shelter. They are “sometimes/ [s]truggling to survive through their [own] misery.” They hold on to “warmth” in order to keep “bitterness” at bay. In “Dr. Who Dreamer,” too, is about the poet’s desire to be a fixer of “the mess-machine” who can set “right all wrongs ever done” and “put time-lines straight”. 

In contrast to the hopefulness in the previous poems, “Myths and Legends” is ambivalent about hope; acts of hopefulness in to form of heroic endeavours may end in “glorious demise or joyous bubble”. Further descending in to moroseness, in “Scribbled With Ink” the poetic persona states that good times are “just lines scribbled/ [o]n sand” and that they are “adorned/[w]ith glimmering beams” of brilliant colour in their brief moments of existence only to vanish “without a trace”.  “Starry Night”, too, is a poem charged with sadness born out of isolation and loneliness. The stars may appear “gentle, calm, and bright” to us who look at them from afar but they are “so lonely” and “cold”. “A Dame Befriended” offers an antidote to the bitterness in the poet born of hopes shatters. The poem is about a woman, his mother, who has made a strong positive impression of the poet: “Bitterness could never conquer/ [s]weetness or shroud her joy.” She lives in the moment and her advice to the poetic persona is “[s]eek no meaning – just live it”. The poet’s love for her shines through in the last two line of the poem; “A beacon to boundless souls/ [b]laze to few darling,” he calls her.

Reason

“Lost in Two Worlds” is a delightful short poem on a thieving pet cat caught “[b]arely a bite red-handed” while the dragonfly in “Oh Dragonfly” despite its ability to reach dizzying heights succumb to “What’s bright” just like the lowly fly and “circle” to its “doom/ [l]etting” reason down the gutter”. While the poetic persona is more understanding of the cat giving into its senses in order to satisfy its primary needs he is not so forgiving of the dragonfly’s irrational desire for gratification. However, Vithanage, in some of his earlier poems have quite emphatically privileged heart over head. In “Goliath and the Snake”, too, irrational Goliath “stir up” “worries” “[w]hen none is there ” and then go on to “complain/[s]aying [it is] too much to bear.” And of course, we know what happened to the giant who stirred up the snake. In “Chaotic Mind” the poet makes his final statement on the issue of the war between reason and passion. “Clarity bears fruit as it must/ [t]o a mind of warring thoughts”, says the poet as his last word on the issue.          

Weaknesses

Looking at ways to improve an already powerful debut collection of poetry, the poet’s tendency to over use inversion is the most notable flaw I have noted in the collection. Vithanage tendency to change the word order to maintain the end rhyme hindering the internal rhythm and make understanding the poem somewhat difficult. The first and the second stanza of “Stirred at Heart” is presents evidence to this:

In the golden age, ‘heroes’ of old

In tales and ballads, we were told

Men of great stature and bold

Was it their nature born?

Indeed, a mightier arm at play

To stir a surface still, in day

Hurry in, act now, you may

Whether divine or devil’s play

To ‘know’ is the wisdom, we pray

‘A plot’ set in, is on the way.

  In addition, one gets the idea that certain words are used at the end solely to maintain the external rhyme. In “[s]plashing on sand, smooth white/ [v]anished without a trace tight” (Scribbled with Ink) the word “tight” does not seem to serve any purpose except to maintain the end rhyme.     

 Also, the division of lines in several poems look questionable. The 2^nd stanza of “Ad Coronam Thermopylae” can be quoted as an example of this tendency:

‘Momento homo’ a faint whisper reverberated

Across the sands of time, ego swells doom follows,

Toiled hard, edifice to dust

A captain wields in his hands, the fate

In times desperate as tales murmured

Remember! Better late than never.

The same trend is visible in “Drops of Rain” and “A Sudden Change” among a few other poems.  Also, Vithanage’s use of what can be termed archaic terms as well as slang terms at times has a disturbing effect when it comes to reading some of his work.