For Janaka Ekanayaka and Sisitha Priyankara

There were two minutes of heavy silence

among ten thousand tired people

Yesterday at Hyde Park.

The music and the speeches, the chanting and the slogans.

Stopped.

Only the sound of the crows

searching for scraps

In the city’s humid afternoon slashed the air, thick with a thousand complex

 emotions.

Sweat soaked into our black arm bands and then dripped onto

The soil into which you both will go: The land you struggled in

Will take you back to keep you safe

But safe is not a place you chose.

You wore no uniform, carried no gun

So you will not go down in history as heroes

In records kept by the powerful and the greedy.

There won’t be bright statues of you

Built in the town centres

No hypocrites will visit you next year

With cameras in tow

No crows will shit on you.

But you were armed, remember?

Courage, strength, fearlessness

So hard to disarm

So difficult to combat with water cannons and tear gas.

What I am trying to say is this:

You will shine brighter than

Any medal you might have worn.

And our memory of you will  never rust

 in the rain of forgetfulness

or in the years of silence.

(Janaka Ekanayaka and Sisitha Priyankara were two very vocal and powerfully active members of a student movement called the Inter University Students Federation currently on a campaign to restore dysfunctional universities in the country back to normalcy, to restore the freedom of students and academics, to depoliticize and de militarize higher education and to compel the government of sri lanka to spend more on state education. They were killed in a road accident two days ago. The IUSF says it has cause to believe their deaths were not accidental)