03-03-2017, 10:21 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-03-2017, 11:04 AM by RiverNotch.)
While I try and find the time to continue my book-transcribing project, here's three poems by a writer featured later in that anthology, Isabela Banzon. There's a stanza in the collection that I can't be sure is a whole stanza or two individual ones since it's all broken by the page, so I'll try and mimic the divisions of my copy by splitting all of this into four posts. Otherwise, I wouldn't even have made its own thread, just lumped it in "Poems that you love".
Rindu
For Rob
Last night, when you were missing love
as I was,
we were lying on a huge bed,
each with nobody beside.
I will slip under
your mosquito netting
and you may, if you wish,
find your way
into me.
Aku cinta padamu,
but it is morning
before I understand
what you say in the dark.
We can't go on meeting like this,
suspended
on wire, post
to post, through cable, under ocean,
under ground.
Fated to each other
but living without,
we rendezvous in a language not our own.
Aku ingin
mencitaimu denga senderhana.
I want
to love you simply,
without fear, without metaphor,
but it is difficult
in English.
It is difficult to imagine how we are
together,
gecko to the other in the permeable air.
You live in me,
outside me.
Kamu hidup di dalam
dan di luar diriku.
The river rushes below.
What are we in the hands of the dalang,
emotion, our puppet master.
Kita tiada sebelum kita bertemu lagi.
We are shadows in a show not of ourselves.
Who are we
that to leave you in the island of the gods
is difficult.
We do not exist.
Di bahasa Inggris, kita tiada.
Robert's Corpses
Robert tells me
he's come back from the Bridge Hotel
his mum's old place, where he dug up corpses
because although he's moved on
the stench follows him.
It's not like there's blood on his hands,
him only twelve when his daddy
walked out and into the Murray River.
His dad kept sliding off the bank, his mum said,
until the weight of two sons she'd left behind
was too heavy even for her.
It's not like there's blood spilled.
Gran was a dingo and no-sort of brother
could come close to making the point,
not that anyone cared,
that like in the Meryl Streep movie
dingoes could tear you apart
and the heart breaks in Wagga Wagga.
Robert shows me his blisters,
the body bags he's been lugging around.
But there's only dust, I say.
I don't buy his story, only a glass of lemonade,
because they don't get along so well,
he and grog, his baby drink.
Radio
There was once a man
who sang all the love songs
I had forgotten and sad
and happy I couldn't make up
my mind fell in love
with him under the cover
of a midnight sky.
Next day
at the hotel lobby
I listened to the voices. Was that him
humming to himself
or laughing with a guest
or letting go
like the couple at the exit?
Love, no matter who you are,
your tenderness was my home
in many cities
dulled by the cold.
And when at the front desk I ask
for the key,
my song is still for you.
A few notes.
No idea when this was written, although this may be part of that anthology I've delayed posting, in which case I'll at least have a year. My copy's taken from what seems to be a regular review of women's studies in the Philippines, so there are notes afterwards, I think written by the author herself. They're primarily concerned with the position of the Philippines as a postcolonial, Southeast Asian country, with the first poem incorporating Bahasa, and all of the poems written in English, although, like the poems themselves, the notes gradually open up to a more global approach, one that focuses on the emotions presented in the piece -- by my read, as if it's the Philippines opening up to a more global, essentially human aesthetic. A particularly interesting note is how she uses Bahasa Indonesia, a language that is, regardless of our close proximity, not popular over here, to capture a very....Filipino sense of feeling, one that she notes "might also help to understand our [the Philippines'] connection with the Malay world as well as why we took so well to Hispanic culture" -- although I may be misreading this note of hers, seeing as I don't have as good an analytical viewpoint on Filipino, Malay, or even Hispanic culture. I'd love to hear your responses.
Rindu
For Rob
Last night, when you were missing love
as I was,
we were lying on a huge bed,
each with nobody beside.
I will slip under
your mosquito netting
and you may, if you wish,
find your way
into me.
Aku cinta padamu,
but it is morning
before I understand
what you say in the dark.
We can't go on meeting like this,
suspended
on wire, post
to post, through cable, under ocean,
under ground.
Fated to each other
but living without,
we rendezvous in a language not our own.
Aku ingin
mencitaimu denga senderhana.
I want
to love you simply,
without fear, without metaphor,
but it is difficult
in English.
It is difficult to imagine how we are
together,
gecko to the other in the permeable air.
You live in me,
outside me.
Kamu hidup di dalam
dan di luar diriku.
The river rushes below.
What are we in the hands of the dalang,
emotion, our puppet master.
Kita tiada sebelum kita bertemu lagi.
We are shadows in a show not of ourselves.
Who are we
that to leave you in the island of the gods
is difficult.
We do not exist.
Di bahasa Inggris, kita tiada.
Robert's Corpses
Robert tells me
he's come back from the Bridge Hotel
his mum's old place, where he dug up corpses
because although he's moved on
the stench follows him.
It's not like there's blood on his hands,
him only twelve when his daddy
walked out and into the Murray River.
His dad kept sliding off the bank, his mum said,
until the weight of two sons she'd left behind
was too heavy even for her.
It's not like there's blood spilled.
Gran was a dingo and no-sort of brother
could come close to making the point,
not that anyone cared,
that like in the Meryl Streep movie
dingoes could tear you apart
and the heart breaks in Wagga Wagga.
Robert shows me his blisters,
the body bags he's been lugging around.
But there's only dust, I say.
I don't buy his story, only a glass of lemonade,
because they don't get along so well,
he and grog, his baby drink.
Radio
There was once a man
who sang all the love songs
I had forgotten and sad
and happy I couldn't make up
my mind fell in love
with him under the cover
of a midnight sky.
Next day
at the hotel lobby
I listened to the voices. Was that him
humming to himself
or laughing with a guest
or letting go
like the couple at the exit?
Love, no matter who you are,
your tenderness was my home
in many cities
dulled by the cold.
And when at the front desk I ask
for the key,
my song is still for you.
A few notes.
No idea when this was written, although this may be part of that anthology I've delayed posting, in which case I'll at least have a year. My copy's taken from what seems to be a regular review of women's studies in the Philippines, so there are notes afterwards, I think written by the author herself. They're primarily concerned with the position of the Philippines as a postcolonial, Southeast Asian country, with the first poem incorporating Bahasa, and all of the poems written in English, although, like the poems themselves, the notes gradually open up to a more global approach, one that focuses on the emotions presented in the piece -- by my read, as if it's the Philippines opening up to a more global, essentially human aesthetic. A particularly interesting note is how she uses Bahasa Indonesia, a language that is, regardless of our close proximity, not popular over here, to capture a very....Filipino sense of feeling, one that she notes "might also help to understand our [the Philippines'] connection with the Malay world as well as why we took so well to Hispanic culture" -- although I may be misreading this note of hers, seeing as I don't have as good an analytical viewpoint on Filipino, Malay, or even Hispanic culture. I'd love to hear your responses.
