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  • The First Rule of Sinhalese Architecture
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The First Rule of Sinhalese Architecture

Michael Ondaatje

Never build three doors
in a straight line

A devil might rush
through them
deep into your house,
into your life

Michael Ondaatje

from Handwriting (London: Bloomsbury, 1998)

Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Tags:

architecture danger devil short poems Sri Lanka superstition

About this poem

This poem, representing Sri Lanka, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1943, moved to the UK in 1954, then Canada in 1962, where he became a citizen. He studied at Bishop’s University, the University of Toronto and Queen’s University, Kingston,...
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