{"id":309168,"date":"2025-12-08T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=309168"},"modified":"2025-12-05T06:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:26:25","slug":"too-heavy-to-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/too-heavy-to-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Heavy to Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspired by the Landslides in Sri Lanka\u2019s Mountains – 2 Dec 2025<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the pearl of the Indian Ocean,
\nA thousand blue hills once kissed the sky\u2014
\nuntil suddenly they slipped,
\nthey broke, they fell.
\nThey said it was the rain,
\nthey said it was the cyclone,
\nThey said it was a storm.
\nBut all were lies.
\nThe truth was simpler\u2014
\nthey could bear no more.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of lives
\nwere taken.
\nThe mountains watched it all.
\nTamil shops set ablaze,
\nmountains of books turned to ash\u2014
\nthe hills stood silent,
\nbearing witness,
\nbearing sorrow,
\nuntil at last
\nthey, too, collapsed in silence.<\/p>\n

Lives burned beside piles of tires,
\nbodies drifting down swollen rivers,
\neyes torn,
\nnails ripped,
\nhell sealed in hidden chambers.
\nThe mountains carried that grief
\nfor years uncounted.<\/p>\n

Beneath every army camp
\nlay buried the quiet truth\u2014
\nmass graves masked by bulldozers
\nthat erased whole villages.
\nStill the mountains held the pain
\nwithout a cry.<\/p>\n

When the sea rose up to the heavens,
\ndevouring thousands in a single breath,
\na wonder remained:
\nthe hills did not crumble.<\/p>\n

Seyas, Vidyas,
\nShobs, Krishanthis\u2014
\nand tens of thousands more,
\nwomen waiting helpless
\nbefore violation.
\nThe mountains saw.
\nThe mountains watched.
\nThe mountains endured their agony.<\/p>\n

Thousands of lives
\nenslaved under the tea leaves
\nFor two hundred years
\nThe mountains witnessed
\ndark cracked line- rooms
\nMountains wanted to cry<\/p>\n

The rulers devoured a nation
\nand lived without shame.
\nThe mountains bore witness
\nas children starved
\non a ruined land
\nas mothers lifted their little ones
\nand set them gently
\ninto the dark river.
\nThe mountains held that sorrow too.<\/p>\n

For decades
\nthey carried and carried
\nthe weight of a paradise
\ndrenched in tears.
\nThey watched everything
\nunfold.<\/p>\n

At last,
\nthe mountains slid\u2014
\nnot for rain,
\nnor cyclone,
\nnor storm,
\nbut because the grief they held
\nbecame too heavy
\nfor stone to bear.<\/p>\n

They said it was the weather.
\nThey said it was the flood.
\nBut there were lies.
\nThe mountains simply
\ncould bear no more.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sanjeewani Rupasinghe is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspired by the Landslides in Sri Lanka\u2019s Mountains – 2 Dec 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":309170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[401,323,391,868,1135],"class_list":["post-309168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-environment","tag-karma","tag-nature","tag-poetry","tag-sri-lanka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309171,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309168\/revisions\/309171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}