Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

The waters of the lagoon were brackish
with the sweat and tears of twenty-six years.
Every eye, every name and story which began
as a caress and ended with a sob
made its way in trickles to the lagoon’s shore.
Here the salty lives pooled –
filled the mouths of those who swam in them
with bitterness. Tried to stop their hearts.

Sorrow made a mirror-lake of longing
in which people found themselves. Sorrow
made a peep-hole, offering glimpses
of forgotten laughter. Sorrow chronicled
a bloody end as the sun dripped fire,
emptying itself. Come immortal waters,
Nanthini, plait my hair with your sodden
breast bones and ribcages.

The Sri Lankan civil war reached its bloody end by the banks of this lagoon. The UN estimates that between 40,000 – 70,000 civilians were killed in the last three months of the war; the majority from being herded into No Fire Zones, set up by the Sri Lankan Army, by the banks of Nanthikadal Lagoon.