10-01-2016, 09:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-01-2016, 09:23 PM by RiverNotch.)
Jason Montana
SATORI, AFTER READING SYLVIA
For Sylvia Mayuga
In a mountain barrio far from the Palace, I sit
By the window open to a wide morning shining
Like a baby's eyes. I watch Red fighters play ball
With civilian youth. I hear a medical officer
And kids singing in a battered school house.
There is a welcome trace of a typhoon in gutmo trees.
Rice field and rooftop warm to a sun in a Red area,
And I think of Sylvia of the hundred questions.
Who asks: in the stage of the defensive, what have
The people gained from gunfire, hamlettings, executions?
Who asks if the people aren't tired of the civil war,
Their hopes crippled by the deaths of loved ones
In a house divided. When do we drop our weapons and walk
The ways of peace? And begin to restyle our lives?
She recites a poem filled with dazzling whiteness
Of our people's greatness. Flowers, beads and icons
Crushing tanks and toppling a dictator. Force of sheer
Spirit stunning the world and shaming the pride of guns.
She suggests we own the imperfections and weaknesses
Of victory and pursue creative models of non-violence:
Of metanoia and aggiornamento, glasnost and perestroika.
Comrade, pardon the rough language of our urgency
And anger and the silliness of our revolution.
But churchman and monarch have built grandstands
And temples on the plains of EDSA. They would have us
Stay in the strip of earth where the world is vast,
And glory in a moment when a whole future has begun.
Better not to mention what you have seen in a corner.
Consider that I'm preparing for a literacy class
This afternoon. Consider that the village folk shall
Discuss land rent reduction and cooperatives tonight,
While the militia guards against fascist intruders.
Consider that the enemy launched bloody operations
Here only last month. Comrade, I place your poem,
Fluent and haunting, in the bright pages of my mind.
But I say that to be human in the armed struggle
Isn't a koan anymore. O, I could be wrong! But
The peasants refuse to be padi fish in dark creels.
Consider the view from my window. In any tiny piece
Of earth, transfiguration is not resurrection.
1989
From RITUALS FOR COMRADE ANNA (1950-1989)
1
In this circle of holiness comrades create
We celebrate you: Word of woman and Cadre
In the people's name we claim you once again.
For the healing of our brokenness, you are.
For the creation of new humanness, you are.
Somehow in a grand mystery are we redeemed
And received into greater life: Weakness to
Your courage --- that we might be strong.
After the singing of our poets, and silence;
After the witnessing to your joys and sorrows,
A lighted candle and your picture are passed
Around. Your light consumes the darkness.
And grief communes with a sea of fulfillment
2
I gather your Beloved
Space of word moment of flesh
And here is all I have
Mementos and scents of intimacies
Memory of a thousand faces
Presence in the eyes of our son
Gestalt of shadows
Death in disguise
The rest of you homeless
As clouds and flow of rivers
To my touch O come
Trace me poor in spirit
Filled with a naked self
And the certitude of stars
3
Every event of you that I have known
Returns to make you whole again.
Your death is merely a distant mountain,
Imposing but harmless. I am well, Beloved,
Ready to pursue the good work of the people,
To help finish this war we hate so,
That all might have life, and abundantly,
Free as the wind and just as the rain.
There are new tasks and forces and strange
Arrangements without you among us. Still
Are there flowers and poems and people.
And all our martyrs are carefully honored.
I love the sky that breathed you last.
I love the earth that drank your blood.
4
Who can stay mementos of wind and surf,
The rustle of leaves and sparkle of burns
We once noticed? so many flowers and clouds
Touched, and ideas we designed together?
In so much music and silence do you live.
I meet comrades and acquaintances who
Would share a word to complete your story
And there you are. You snap like a twig
At every turn I take in the people's war,
And stir like freshness from old love letters,
Like flash of insight from common patterns.
I remember how Deity travels, rising
From sunlight or birdsong, and moving on.
My heart opens that you may stop and rest.
1991
Fernando Afable
THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM
Though a poet can choose his words,
he cannot choose his language.
For R. B.
When we were in Dumaguete
for the workshop of '62,
tired of combing interminable
beaches of white sand,
one night you arranged with
the pianist-pimp of the North
Pole (the only bar
in that cane-sugar town)
to meet the native Dumaguete
whores. Through the dark
we trundled down, tipsy
but half-afraid what if
our pianist-pimp was also
a rogue? We would have
lost our petty cash
in this southern port
where only visiting critics
and poets spoke English.
He was, though he haggled
a stiff price for the girls,
an honest man, it seems ---
somewhere, the calesa halted
deep in the night, long
after the asphalt streets
run out. The ramshackle
two-storey whorehouse
seemed too rank a place
for a proper loss of virtue,
but just turned twenty
macho poets can try:
outside the pimp waited
with horse and whip for cash.
Since then, we have blushed
at other minor farces,
our friends abandoned verse
to keep their novels in suspense,
and we have seen our lines
thin out in air:
but how can we obscure those
damas de noches?
Drunk, and trying to screw
the woman from Dumaguete
you could hardly see,
your shout rattled the paper
"a language problem!" You couldn't
get what you wanted because
she was too innocent, or wise,
or didn't understand English
or whatever language virgin
poets try on the world
weary women of the south.
Too late to be apprentices. We are old.
1975
LETTER TO THE PHILIPPINES
To Patricia, March 21
Outside the snow
Falls incomprehensibly
On a day of spring
By the calendar. We wish
For winter, home,
Who fancy relief
From tropical rain,
The fidelity of lead
To tree all year, dust
Blighting the vision ---
Faith in the crystalline snow
To cure the ills we feel
One season bestows.
Yet should chance winds
Blow blizzards that-a-way,
Winter were not enough.
After the novelty of
White-mantled islands,
Those far latitudes
Would sigh for spring.
1975
EL CAMINO REAL
(Paso Alto, California)
Headlights push El Camino
north and south through the night,
where, faithful to their maps,
they find their destinations
like sleepwalkers returning
without hazard, to their homes.
Cruising El Camino tonight
to fill up time, or your mind,
which is empty as the night sky,
you smile because you know
you can't get lost if you're sure
you don't know where you're going.
Before you find out, dawn
breaks like a surprise and
the night lies abandoned
with your wife, far north.
You are tempted to drive on,
the road grows on you like
a tapeworm, but your stomach
squirms for dinner, resentful.
You call home collect; your wife
fills the phone booth with tears.
Almost drowning, how can you explain
an empty mind drove you to Mexico?
And you turn back, abashed,
homing in your home, gaunt,
yet prodigal with your speed.
Sleepless, your wife is haggard
when she takes you in, saying
"you left the lights on."
1980
THE ICE STORM
After the ice storm,
though the world glowed
as if with a half life
under a fluorescent moon,
and though the new year
had just stepped forth,
it was clear to my dog
out for a walk tonight
the year ahead was just
another year of the dog.
So puzzled! that the earth
lay under seamless glass
and was so rudely purged
of smells and squirrels.
Is the heaven of dogs
a maze of odors, leading
to sex and buried bones?
Does it have suburbs
where voices (yours and mine)
call them by their names?
As for my own --- my heaven ---
it's such a fragile place
only doubt sustains it.
I was looking ahead
for the dull patch
of least slippery ground
when a silver maple
crackled like dry flint
to shed its bark of ice.
I saw it craze
into shards of moonlight
and fall. Then came
a wind so ether-sweet
I turned the other cheek.
1988
MANILA INTERNATIONAL
Tagalog crackles on the intercom
In Cook County Hospital, Chicago.
In the night shift, patients overhear
Strange accents, a miniature Manila.
One Filipino nurse survived the night
A psycho went on a killing spree
And slit sex other throats; by playing dead
She lived to put Manila on the map.
"Tagalog on the intercom, in Cook County!"
New immigrants exclaim. "Only at night
When Filipinos work the graveyard shift;
At dawn they return to their highrises."
Rotunda, cine, calle, mas o menos ---
The fluid Spanish cognates filter through
To mix with other Pre-Hispanic syllables:
Ang buhay dito ay parang pangarap.
But here, on charter tickets headed home,
We speak our common public language, English.
Two sisters, speaking the clear, nasal sounds
Of children educated in America,
Implore their father to take off his hat,
The calabash he left Manila in
Twenty years ago. "Forgive," he says,
"And have another round of diet free."
"And have another round," that ease of idiom
We learn from friends, or late night movies.
"Forgive," uttered with hesitance, a true
Tagalog sentiment blurred by translation?
"The hat is only for landing, you know I never
Would dare like this to walk the streets of L.A."
"But papa, you're so conspicuous here ---
You're not a farmer on the wrong flight."
I listen to the passengers converse about
The bargains of Hong Kong --- of fine perfumes
And solar watches digitizing time ---
The presents they would rather not declare;
And hear, behind their English, other measures.
Landing, we shall shed this second language
And slip into our first, original tongue,
Haltingly, like speech after a long silence.
Descending from the stratosphere
Of Pan American, we finally touch ground.
We brace against the torque of engines in reverse
And spill out to encounter Customs.
"You often become an American," are words
So often heard they've lost their edge, like faces
Embraced so close they seem a part of us
This homesick chartered visit home.
1990
IN MEDIAS RES
These days, Teiresias, find me in the doldrums.
This started out as my last meander,
A final junket before going home,
But here, becalmed on this moonscape of lahar,
I ask if seers are tricksters in disguise
Who should be taken with a grain of salt.
To walk inland, to the most remote precincts,
The sitio interior, where my battered oar
Would meet the curious glances, Teiresias,
And be mistaken for a winnowing fan,
And on that virgin soil to plant my oar
Then tack towards the sunset, westward, home,
To sweet Penelope and her waiting loom...
I thought it had such mythic overtones,
The right elixir for a mid-life crisis.
"Yes! Odysseus has been here. The shabby oar
He planted like a banner in our sitio
So absorbed our luthier: he packed his bags
And left his wife and kids to find the tree
That yields such parallel lines of grain
To make a fretboard for a new guitar..."
Such consequences of my enterprise,
So unexpected, so absurd, and yet
So fitting, I should have argued, Teiresias,
When, after landfall in this orient pearl,
Outriggered dugouts met me wading in,
And like an undertow that tugged me seaward,
My self-effacing goddess, Athena, whispered,
"What country flaunts the longest shoreline
Yet has the least amount of hectares?"
In my haste to walkabout, I missed her drift.
I headed North. Always the natives told
Of people just a few days march away,
Shy swiddeners hemmed in by mountains
Beyond the reedy swamps of a central plain.
And so I walked and heard the same story:
A few more rosy fingers of dawns, beyond
Those switchbacks, after those distant ridges,
Across that valley, past that smoky mountain...
I've walked, Teiresias, past this central plain,
Across a neck of land, to swelling ground,
Then greener mountains, peak on peak, and met
Those mountain men, walking down, to trade
Some starchy tubers for a bag of salt.
I persevered; but found, deep inland,
Some thing or other sea-born, finely wrought,
Like lustrous combs of mother-of-pearl
Fashioned to keep a young woman's hair.
Some say the journey, not the arrival, matters,
Yet I have wished, like a boy sent off to war,
That I could learn to be away from home at home.
I long for home, among other places,
But am cursed with the shark's wanderlust,
And cannot pause for long, lest I retire.
I'm weary shooting the breeze with barrio captains.
If truth be told, they'd say too much rice wine
Has fried my brains. "I'm just an academic,"
I say, "trolling around for grants, another thesis.
I'm here to look for quarky allophones.
This Grecian oar's a footnote from another trip."
1993
Albert B. Casuga
IN A SPARROW'S TIME
Poems on the Death of Gen. Antonio Luna y Novicio, Soldier
In 1897, Gen. Antonio Luna was exiled to Madrid. He had just denounced the Katipunan and some friends like Rizal, Alejandrino, et al. out of anger. His Spanish captors told him --- during the reign of terror that followed the discovery of the KKK --- he was betrayed by his compatriots. A year later, after studying military science in exile, he came back to the country to volunteer his services to the Revolution against the Americans. He was subsequently appointed Director of War. His obsession of creating a disciplined army and his desire to make up for his disavowal of the KKK brought him untold frustration and consequently his death. On June 5, 1899, that fateful day of his assassination, Luna rode towards Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, responding to a summons purportedly coming from President Aguinaldo. He was accompanied by Col. Paco Roman, Maj. Simeon Villa, and some 25 cavalrymen. Upon coming across a broken bridge on his way, the impatient general left his retinue behind and kept his date.
He is that fallen lance that
lies as hurled.
--- Robert Frost, A Soldier
1. Confessions Before a Broken Bridge
It is my grief pursues a habit of death,
The weight of a mountain rides me down.
But blood must be avenged --- if blood it is
Would still the violence knotted in my gut.
If men should die at all, they must be pure:
The crag that breaks for them will be.
But these rocks, this grass, this brackish cove,
They shall not take me. I shall not even die.
Earth vomits the gall of its memories.
I am a memory bitter to the bite.
Forgive me.
2. The Exile
It was cold out there, Pepe, hermano querido.
Madrid, Barcelona, Catalan --- Manila ---
How could they ever be any different,
My anguish knew no country but death.
Your fall at sparrow's time was as much as mine,
The bullet from my gun.
It is our passion devours us.
Ourselves our war.
The Revolution was a bastard son, Rizal.
Denying it, I found myself becoming one.
Was it this fury we dreaded most?
Or was it the son we refused to father?
When born, we disdained to patronize?
Was it because it had its mother's features?
Revolutions are by paps of ignorance mothered.
3. Luna Shall Overcome!
His vile temper felled him.
--- D. Esquivel
1.
No, Señor Presidente, it is not in our habit
To be spat upon while offering our haunches
For rending and outrage! Faith must end
Beyond the whore's bed and that cuckolded Bay!
If Dewey had fooled us once, let us,
I demand of this assembly, be the wrath of God
And cut the Yanqui balls asunder!
2.
What? Are they still yapping at Malolos?
Caloocan has fallen! Calumpit imperiled!
Send for Janolino to shore La Loma up.
Torres Bugallon is dead. What?
Pedrong Kastila is sore in bed?
What sort of harlot had he?
3.
It is your kind, Tomas Mascardo,
Deserves to be caponed!
The Macabebes have sold out to the Yanqui,
And here you are sucking nipples
For your breakfast!
4.
Paralysis. It must be this plagues our war.
Like castrated chicken the Cabinet asks
For Yanqui armistice! Has Mabini gone limp, too,
In his head? We should never surrender
Our birthright to die free and unafraid!
5.
Remember this, Buencamino! I could have
Crushed your manhood bit by ugly bit
For begging your troops turn to maricones!
What? And leave them lap the Yanqui stool?
O you small, weak men better born as rats!
Tell Shurmann, tell Mabini ---
Luna shall overcome!
4. Deathwish Kept: June 5, 1899
There was one, Diego Esquivel,
Who witnessed the carnage.
--- Julio Villamor
Some afternoon dread becomes this heat
That singes the Convento where he fell.
On this branch should his rended arms be at,
On that flagstone should his plucked eyes tell
How blindly stared the blinded rage,
How soundlessly shut the windows there.
Was it some passion play on a barren stage?
Was it some cruel theatre of its audience bare?
Here, touch the crack slithers on this tree:
Your fingers should trace a slosh of brain,
Cold drip of sap now blood on cold machete.
The afternoon's dread is an afternoon's pain
Dulled the laughter caught in the horseman's throat.
Was it man slain there, or was it heart done in?
Was it vengeance sated, or was it deathwish kept?
Was it fallen man cried helplessly: Assassins!
Or was it slayers fell where slain had spat:
TRAITORS! ASSASSINS!
5. The Habit of Mountains: A Dirge
1.
"It was his grief pursued the habit of mountains:
It moved the world with quietness.
Quietness moved them.
No dearer madness there is than which he died for:
A will to perish in time and manner he chose."
2.
"It could not have been any kinder than this falling,
A manner of bargaining one's way
Into a choice between a kind of dying and feeling dead ---
No option for us who learn, too early perhaps,
That death prorogues a dream of fancy
Or a prayer of willing our pain to stay
The ramrod poised to rend our days descending
Foglike upon us decreeing silence for our bed."
6. To Find Sons Become Spittle: an Epitaph
But can courage redeem stupidity?
--- Nick Joaquin
There is a manner of returning to the root
Explains the virtue of a hole,
Its quietness the petering circle.
The canon of the cipher indicts us all.
And you, rocking yourself to an eddy,
Drown the deathwish: O that grief
On sons' faces could tell you all.
"Will courage be visited upon my children?
It is this cut whittles the tree down,
Not of consumption but of fright
That bereaving is one's splintering
Of children's bones. Death then is our betrayal."
They are sons gaping as grandfathers die
Shape the gloom of the breaking circle.
They who knew the frenzy of the bloodcry
Must never return to find sons become spittle.
1972
If y'all's haven't noticed yet, I do add to the first post every time I post, it bears the contents -- and also, it contains a few scribe's notes, the most recently posted I think is kinda important.
SATORI, AFTER READING SYLVIA
For Sylvia Mayuga
In a mountain barrio far from the Palace, I sit
By the window open to a wide morning shining
Like a baby's eyes. I watch Red fighters play ball
With civilian youth. I hear a medical officer
And kids singing in a battered school house.
There is a welcome trace of a typhoon in gutmo trees.
Rice field and rooftop warm to a sun in a Red area,
And I think of Sylvia of the hundred questions.
Who asks: in the stage of the defensive, what have
The people gained from gunfire, hamlettings, executions?
Who asks if the people aren't tired of the civil war,
Their hopes crippled by the deaths of loved ones
In a house divided. When do we drop our weapons and walk
The ways of peace? And begin to restyle our lives?
She recites a poem filled with dazzling whiteness
Of our people's greatness. Flowers, beads and icons
Crushing tanks and toppling a dictator. Force of sheer
Spirit stunning the world and shaming the pride of guns.
She suggests we own the imperfections and weaknesses
Of victory and pursue creative models of non-violence:
Of metanoia and aggiornamento, glasnost and perestroika.
Comrade, pardon the rough language of our urgency
And anger and the silliness of our revolution.
But churchman and monarch have built grandstands
And temples on the plains of EDSA. They would have us
Stay in the strip of earth where the world is vast,
And glory in a moment when a whole future has begun.
Better not to mention what you have seen in a corner.
Consider that I'm preparing for a literacy class
This afternoon. Consider that the village folk shall
Discuss land rent reduction and cooperatives tonight,
While the militia guards against fascist intruders.
Consider that the enemy launched bloody operations
Here only last month. Comrade, I place your poem,
Fluent and haunting, in the bright pages of my mind.
But I say that to be human in the armed struggle
Isn't a koan anymore. O, I could be wrong! But
The peasants refuse to be padi fish in dark creels.
Consider the view from my window. In any tiny piece
Of earth, transfiguration is not resurrection.
1989
From RITUALS FOR COMRADE ANNA (1950-1989)
1
In this circle of holiness comrades create
We celebrate you: Word of woman and Cadre
In the people's name we claim you once again.
For the healing of our brokenness, you are.
For the creation of new humanness, you are.
Somehow in a grand mystery are we redeemed
And received into greater life: Weakness to
Your courage --- that we might be strong.
After the singing of our poets, and silence;
After the witnessing to your joys and sorrows,
A lighted candle and your picture are passed
Around. Your light consumes the darkness.
And grief communes with a sea of fulfillment
2
I gather your Beloved
Space of word moment of flesh
And here is all I have
Mementos and scents of intimacies
Memory of a thousand faces
Presence in the eyes of our son
Gestalt of shadows
Death in disguise
The rest of you homeless
As clouds and flow of rivers
To my touch O come
Trace me poor in spirit
Filled with a naked self
And the certitude of stars
3
Every event of you that I have known
Returns to make you whole again.
Your death is merely a distant mountain,
Imposing but harmless. I am well, Beloved,
Ready to pursue the good work of the people,
To help finish this war we hate so,
That all might have life, and abundantly,
Free as the wind and just as the rain.
There are new tasks and forces and strange
Arrangements without you among us. Still
Are there flowers and poems and people.
And all our martyrs are carefully honored.
I love the sky that breathed you last.
I love the earth that drank your blood.
4
Who can stay mementos of wind and surf,
The rustle of leaves and sparkle of burns
We once noticed? so many flowers and clouds
Touched, and ideas we designed together?
In so much music and silence do you live.
I meet comrades and acquaintances who
Would share a word to complete your story
And there you are. You snap like a twig
At every turn I take in the people's war,
And stir like freshness from old love letters,
Like flash of insight from common patterns.
I remember how Deity travels, rising
From sunlight or birdsong, and moving on.
My heart opens that you may stop and rest.
1991
Fernando Afable
THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM
Though a poet can choose his words,
he cannot choose his language.
For R. B.
When we were in Dumaguete
for the workshop of '62,
tired of combing interminable
beaches of white sand,
one night you arranged with
the pianist-pimp of the North
Pole (the only bar
in that cane-sugar town)
to meet the native Dumaguete
whores. Through the dark
we trundled down, tipsy
but half-afraid what if
our pianist-pimp was also
a rogue? We would have
lost our petty cash
in this southern port
where only visiting critics
and poets spoke English.
He was, though he haggled
a stiff price for the girls,
an honest man, it seems ---
somewhere, the calesa halted
deep in the night, long
after the asphalt streets
run out. The ramshackle
two-storey whorehouse
seemed too rank a place
for a proper loss of virtue,
but just turned twenty
macho poets can try:
outside the pimp waited
with horse and whip for cash.
Since then, we have blushed
at other minor farces,
our friends abandoned verse
to keep their novels in suspense,
and we have seen our lines
thin out in air:
but how can we obscure those
damas de noches?
Drunk, and trying to screw
the woman from Dumaguete
you could hardly see,
your shout rattled the paper
"a language problem!" You couldn't
get what you wanted because
she was too innocent, or wise,
or didn't understand English
or whatever language virgin
poets try on the world
weary women of the south.
Too late to be apprentices. We are old.
1975
LETTER TO THE PHILIPPINES
To Patricia, March 21
Outside the snow
Falls incomprehensibly
On a day of spring
By the calendar. We wish
For winter, home,
Who fancy relief
From tropical rain,
The fidelity of lead
To tree all year, dust
Blighting the vision ---
Faith in the crystalline snow
To cure the ills we feel
One season bestows.
Yet should chance winds
Blow blizzards that-a-way,
Winter were not enough.
After the novelty of
White-mantled islands,
Those far latitudes
Would sigh for spring.
1975
EL CAMINO REAL
(Paso Alto, California)
Headlights push El Camino
north and south through the night,
where, faithful to their maps,
they find their destinations
like sleepwalkers returning
without hazard, to their homes.
Cruising El Camino tonight
to fill up time, or your mind,
which is empty as the night sky,
you smile because you know
you can't get lost if you're sure
you don't know where you're going.
Before you find out, dawn
breaks like a surprise and
the night lies abandoned
with your wife, far north.
You are tempted to drive on,
the road grows on you like
a tapeworm, but your stomach
squirms for dinner, resentful.
You call home collect; your wife
fills the phone booth with tears.
Almost drowning, how can you explain
an empty mind drove you to Mexico?
And you turn back, abashed,
homing in your home, gaunt,
yet prodigal with your speed.
Sleepless, your wife is haggard
when she takes you in, saying
"you left the lights on."
1980
THE ICE STORM
After the ice storm,
though the world glowed
as if with a half life
under a fluorescent moon,
and though the new year
had just stepped forth,
it was clear to my dog
out for a walk tonight
the year ahead was just
another year of the dog.
So puzzled! that the earth
lay under seamless glass
and was so rudely purged
of smells and squirrels.
Is the heaven of dogs
a maze of odors, leading
to sex and buried bones?
Does it have suburbs
where voices (yours and mine)
call them by their names?
As for my own --- my heaven ---
it's such a fragile place
only doubt sustains it.
I was looking ahead
for the dull patch
of least slippery ground
when a silver maple
crackled like dry flint
to shed its bark of ice.
I saw it craze
into shards of moonlight
and fall. Then came
a wind so ether-sweet
I turned the other cheek.
1988
MANILA INTERNATIONAL
Tagalog crackles on the intercom
In Cook County Hospital, Chicago.
In the night shift, patients overhear
Strange accents, a miniature Manila.
One Filipino nurse survived the night
A psycho went on a killing spree
And slit sex other throats; by playing dead
She lived to put Manila on the map.
"Tagalog on the intercom, in Cook County!"
New immigrants exclaim. "Only at night
When Filipinos work the graveyard shift;
At dawn they return to their highrises."
Rotunda, cine, calle, mas o menos ---
The fluid Spanish cognates filter through
To mix with other Pre-Hispanic syllables:
Ang buhay dito ay parang pangarap.
But here, on charter tickets headed home,
We speak our common public language, English.
Two sisters, speaking the clear, nasal sounds
Of children educated in America,
Implore their father to take off his hat,
The calabash he left Manila in
Twenty years ago. "Forgive," he says,
"And have another round of diet free."
"And have another round," that ease of idiom
We learn from friends, or late night movies.
"Forgive," uttered with hesitance, a true
Tagalog sentiment blurred by translation?
"The hat is only for landing, you know I never
Would dare like this to walk the streets of L.A."
"But papa, you're so conspicuous here ---
You're not a farmer on the wrong flight."
I listen to the passengers converse about
The bargains of Hong Kong --- of fine perfumes
And solar watches digitizing time ---
The presents they would rather not declare;
And hear, behind their English, other measures.
Landing, we shall shed this second language
And slip into our first, original tongue,
Haltingly, like speech after a long silence.
Descending from the stratosphere
Of Pan American, we finally touch ground.
We brace against the torque of engines in reverse
And spill out to encounter Customs.
"You often become an American," are words
So often heard they've lost their edge, like faces
Embraced so close they seem a part of us
This homesick chartered visit home.
1990
IN MEDIAS RES
These days, Teiresias, find me in the doldrums.
This started out as my last meander,
A final junket before going home,
But here, becalmed on this moonscape of lahar,
I ask if seers are tricksters in disguise
Who should be taken with a grain of salt.
To walk inland, to the most remote precincts,
The sitio interior, where my battered oar
Would meet the curious glances, Teiresias,
And be mistaken for a winnowing fan,
And on that virgin soil to plant my oar
Then tack towards the sunset, westward, home,
To sweet Penelope and her waiting loom...
I thought it had such mythic overtones,
The right elixir for a mid-life crisis.
"Yes! Odysseus has been here. The shabby oar
He planted like a banner in our sitio
So absorbed our luthier: he packed his bags
And left his wife and kids to find the tree
That yields such parallel lines of grain
To make a fretboard for a new guitar..."
Such consequences of my enterprise,
So unexpected, so absurd, and yet
So fitting, I should have argued, Teiresias,
When, after landfall in this orient pearl,
Outriggered dugouts met me wading in,
And like an undertow that tugged me seaward,
My self-effacing goddess, Athena, whispered,
"What country flaunts the longest shoreline
Yet has the least amount of hectares?"
In my haste to walkabout, I missed her drift.
I headed North. Always the natives told
Of people just a few days march away,
Shy swiddeners hemmed in by mountains
Beyond the reedy swamps of a central plain.
And so I walked and heard the same story:
A few more rosy fingers of dawns, beyond
Those switchbacks, after those distant ridges,
Across that valley, past that smoky mountain...
I've walked, Teiresias, past this central plain,
Across a neck of land, to swelling ground,
Then greener mountains, peak on peak, and met
Those mountain men, walking down, to trade
Some starchy tubers for a bag of salt.
I persevered; but found, deep inland,
Some thing or other sea-born, finely wrought,
Like lustrous combs of mother-of-pearl
Fashioned to keep a young woman's hair.
Some say the journey, not the arrival, matters,
Yet I have wished, like a boy sent off to war,
That I could learn to be away from home at home.
I long for home, among other places,
But am cursed with the shark's wanderlust,
And cannot pause for long, lest I retire.
I'm weary shooting the breeze with barrio captains.
If truth be told, they'd say too much rice wine
Has fried my brains. "I'm just an academic,"
I say, "trolling around for grants, another thesis.
I'm here to look for quarky allophones.
This Grecian oar's a footnote from another trip."
1993
Albert B. Casuga
IN A SPARROW'S TIME
Poems on the Death of Gen. Antonio Luna y Novicio, Soldier
In 1897, Gen. Antonio Luna was exiled to Madrid. He had just denounced the Katipunan and some friends like Rizal, Alejandrino, et al. out of anger. His Spanish captors told him --- during the reign of terror that followed the discovery of the KKK --- he was betrayed by his compatriots. A year later, after studying military science in exile, he came back to the country to volunteer his services to the Revolution against the Americans. He was subsequently appointed Director of War. His obsession of creating a disciplined army and his desire to make up for his disavowal of the KKK brought him untold frustration and consequently his death. On June 5, 1899, that fateful day of his assassination, Luna rode towards Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, responding to a summons purportedly coming from President Aguinaldo. He was accompanied by Col. Paco Roman, Maj. Simeon Villa, and some 25 cavalrymen. Upon coming across a broken bridge on his way, the impatient general left his retinue behind and kept his date.
He is that fallen lance that
lies as hurled.
--- Robert Frost, A Soldier
1. Confessions Before a Broken Bridge
It is my grief pursues a habit of death,
The weight of a mountain rides me down.
But blood must be avenged --- if blood it is
Would still the violence knotted in my gut.
If men should die at all, they must be pure:
The crag that breaks for them will be.
But these rocks, this grass, this brackish cove,
They shall not take me. I shall not even die.
Earth vomits the gall of its memories.
I am a memory bitter to the bite.
Forgive me.
2. The Exile
It was cold out there, Pepe, hermano querido.
Madrid, Barcelona, Catalan --- Manila ---
How could they ever be any different,
My anguish knew no country but death.
Your fall at sparrow's time was as much as mine,
The bullet from my gun.
It is our passion devours us.
Ourselves our war.
The Revolution was a bastard son, Rizal.
Denying it, I found myself becoming one.
Was it this fury we dreaded most?
Or was it the son we refused to father?
When born, we disdained to patronize?
Was it because it had its mother's features?
Revolutions are by paps of ignorance mothered.
3. Luna Shall Overcome!
His vile temper felled him.
--- D. Esquivel
1.
No, Señor Presidente, it is not in our habit
To be spat upon while offering our haunches
For rending and outrage! Faith must end
Beyond the whore's bed and that cuckolded Bay!
If Dewey had fooled us once, let us,
I demand of this assembly, be the wrath of God
And cut the Yanqui balls asunder!
2.
What? Are they still yapping at Malolos?
Caloocan has fallen! Calumpit imperiled!
Send for Janolino to shore La Loma up.
Torres Bugallon is dead. What?
Pedrong Kastila is sore in bed?
What sort of harlot had he?
3.
It is your kind, Tomas Mascardo,
Deserves to be caponed!
The Macabebes have sold out to the Yanqui,
And here you are sucking nipples
For your breakfast!
4.
Paralysis. It must be this plagues our war.
Like castrated chicken the Cabinet asks
For Yanqui armistice! Has Mabini gone limp, too,
In his head? We should never surrender
Our birthright to die free and unafraid!
5.
Remember this, Buencamino! I could have
Crushed your manhood bit by ugly bit
For begging your troops turn to maricones!
What? And leave them lap the Yanqui stool?
O you small, weak men better born as rats!
Tell Shurmann, tell Mabini ---
Luna shall overcome!
4. Deathwish Kept: June 5, 1899
There was one, Diego Esquivel,
Who witnessed the carnage.
--- Julio Villamor
Some afternoon dread becomes this heat
That singes the Convento where he fell.
On this branch should his rended arms be at,
On that flagstone should his plucked eyes tell
How blindly stared the blinded rage,
How soundlessly shut the windows there.
Was it some passion play on a barren stage?
Was it some cruel theatre of its audience bare?
Here, touch the crack slithers on this tree:
Your fingers should trace a slosh of brain,
Cold drip of sap now blood on cold machete.
The afternoon's dread is an afternoon's pain
Dulled the laughter caught in the horseman's throat.
Was it man slain there, or was it heart done in?
Was it vengeance sated, or was it deathwish kept?
Was it fallen man cried helplessly: Assassins!
Or was it slayers fell where slain had spat:
TRAITORS! ASSASSINS!
5. The Habit of Mountains: A Dirge
1.
"It was his grief pursued the habit of mountains:
It moved the world with quietness.
Quietness moved them.
No dearer madness there is than which he died for:
A will to perish in time and manner he chose."
2.
"It could not have been any kinder than this falling,
A manner of bargaining one's way
Into a choice between a kind of dying and feeling dead ---
No option for us who learn, too early perhaps,
That death prorogues a dream of fancy
Or a prayer of willing our pain to stay
The ramrod poised to rend our days descending
Foglike upon us decreeing silence for our bed."
6. To Find Sons Become Spittle: an Epitaph
But can courage redeem stupidity?
--- Nick Joaquin
There is a manner of returning to the root
Explains the virtue of a hole,
Its quietness the petering circle.
The canon of the cipher indicts us all.
And you, rocking yourself to an eddy,
Drown the deathwish: O that grief
On sons' faces could tell you all.
"Will courage be visited upon my children?
It is this cut whittles the tree down,
Not of consumption but of fright
That bereaving is one's splintering
Of children's bones. Death then is our betrayal."
They are sons gaping as grandfathers die
Shape the gloom of the breaking circle.
They who knew the frenzy of the bloodcry
Must never return to find sons become spittle.
1972
If y'all's haven't noticed yet, I do add to the first post every time I post, it bears the contents -- and also, it contains a few scribe's notes, the most recently posted I think is kinda important.