( After the Easter Bombing, 2019)

To daily travelers like me,
Mr. Aziz was a common sight on the train.
Small and bearded, clean and bright
He was the perfect train companion.
Newspaper in hand, brief case clutched tight
He would smartly stand up for the ladies,
book tickets and hold parcels
For the less fortunate.
An old hand in the Kandy line
His neat little person ideal
For walking between temperamental
Carriages, rubbing intimately
Against ill-fitted hinges,

Despite creaking bolts
And rusty fringes.

When the trains started again, mid-May
He was a changed man.
Suddenly his clothes hung on him loosely
And people looked at him askance.
They slithered further from him
In the ticketing queue-
And no ladies wished to hold his parcels.
There were subtle evasions
And cruel barbs-
And one day he comes, his beard gone
The valleys and shadows of his face open to
Our stripping gaze.
He settles himself awkwardly in a corner-seat
Wishing himself invisible
And somehow, I know,
That this is the beginning of an end,
He will perhaps retire a few months in advance,
Sit on his porch in glum silence-
Recalling the magical sway of old carriages,
Rubbing with familiarity through tunnels and lanes-
Like old lovers, though ill-matched,
arrange creaking limbs on creaking beds.

Despite creaking bolts
and corroded chains.