Healing strokes

By Laila Nasry

This is the room of Dr. George R. Wijegunaratne. The little board with the consultation times outside his room indicates he is a busy man. But his world does not revolve around tablets and syrups only. He definitely has time for the nature enthusiast in him. 

Having painted for 15 years, art has become a form of meditation for him. A hobby he thoroughly enjoys. "Once I see my patients I get down to painting," says Dr. Wijegunaratne who even paints while talking to his patients. He only uses oils for illustration because "it's easy. I can do it in two to three sittings and complete it".

Besides art, going into the jungle is another of his favourite pastimes. Nature inspires him and looking at the doctor's works of art it is obvious. 

Being in constant contact with people has led to Dr. Wijegunaratne also indulging in portraits. His paintings do not have specific themes but some, like the one where he has painted a man looking into a mirror, have an underlying meaning. He tries to bring out the fact that reflecting on one's conscience, which is depicted by the heart and brain, is a form of self-purification.

Dr. Wijegunaratne's second exhibition, 'A doctor's prescription in art' in three years is on today, at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery. "When I have a reasonable collection I am compelled to have an exhibition," he chuckles.

Childhood's delight and pain in rhyme and rhythm

By Alfreda de Silva

He must travel back a long road to recapture his own childhood's delight in rhyme and rhythm, the regular beat in the music of words. 

He must use his faculty of memory to call up the things that are no longer there and use them. And though dragons, unicorns, fairies and mermaids held him captive in childhood, as indeed they should have done, things are very different today.

The make-believe of the old poetry of childhood has given way to a revealing new make-believe, a mix of fantasy and reality that goes hand in hand with emotions. 

It is based on the modern poet's recognition that children are people not of a lesser breed. That their delight in the complicated world around them springs from a sense of wonder filled with enhanced curiosity, doubts and fears. 

The common denomination of the poetry about childhood both then and now is innocence. 

Hamilton Moore's poem Pan, the piping woodland God of Greek mythology, is transformed magically here to a ragged street child, who makes music in his own way and is totally unaware of the impact he is creating: 

Round and about the sordid street, 
With grimy face and dusty feet, 
Tattered jacket, ragged vest, 
.... Laughing lips and shining eyes
.... Pan, of his woodland haunts beguiled, 
Is come again, a gutter child, 
That lightly trips on twinkling toes 
And through a comb and paper blows
Fantastic music as he goes." 

A different kind of music is what The Newsboy brings, according to Ernest Rhys: 

In his hand behold the sheet
Of that music none too sweet
With the regions on its leaves
Writ in dots and semibreves, 
Music? Nay, it is the world
In his smudgy fingers furled 

Laurence Binyon captures atmospheric movement, music and pathos in The Little Dancers

Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the sky
Dreams, and lonely below, the little street. 
....And all is dark, save where come flooding rays
From a tavern window; there, to the brisk measure
Of an organ that down in an alley merrily plays, 
Two children, all alone and no one by, 
Holding their tattered frocks....
Dance sedately, face to face they gaze, 
Their eyes shining with perfect pleasure 

A rummaging in an old over-stuffed book cupboard brought me the serendipity of American poet and fiction writer Nancy Willard's Carpenter of the Sun - one of my lost souvenirs from the Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, Connecticut, some years ago. 

Willard suggests in her writing that the creative artist is under a spell and trapped by magic which is in the very act of creating. 

This poem about her seven-year-old son from which the title of the book is taken, is characteristic of the whimsical skill of the writer: 

"My child goes forth to fix the sun, 
A hammer in his hand and a pocketful of nails, 
Nobody else has noticed the crack. 
Twilight breaks on the kitchen floor, 
His hands clip and hammer the air, 
He pulls something out, 
Something like a bad tooth, 
and he puts something back, 
And the kitchen is full of peace 
All this is done very quietly
Without payment or promises 

Nancy Willard brings the same benevolent look into a child's mind in this poem, In Praise of ABC

God bless my son and his wooden letters 
Who has gone to bed with A in his right hand and Z in his left 
Who has walked all day with C in his shoe and said nothing
Who has eaten of his napkin the word Birthday, 
And who has filled my house with the broken speech of wizards

The quality which most distinguishes the work of D.H. Lawrence is an intense awareness of the physical world around him. In Discord in Childhood he paints a word picture with great vividness of a child's terror at fierce quarrels between his parents, while a storm brews outside. 

Poetry about children and childhood is for parents, teachers and child minders, because of the insight it provides into children's behaviour. 

Outside the house an ash tree hung its whips
And at night, when the wind rose, the lash of the tree! 
Shrieked and slashed the wind as a ship's
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously. 
Within the house two voices arose, a slender lash 
Whistling the delirious rage and the dreadful sound
Of a male thong booming and bruising until it had drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, neath the noise of the ash

Children's literature which records grief and pain also records the resilience with which children run towards joy. The skill with which they invent their own games inspired this poem: Children playing at Independence Square

Out of the hunger and stench
of their shack, 
Three children leap into the arc of light of the fountain
They play at birds fluting, 
Horses prancing, 
dancing leprechauns. 
A trick of light
Spins haloes through their hair
.... and gilds their arms to sickles swinging the air, 
from gold mouth 
their laughter rings their celebration of childhood, 
their pure joy transforming 
the cruel, unlovely night. 

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