HARAYA

Philippine Poetry.

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Mata

RAMON M. DAMASING

Kagandahan ang salarin sa pagkatha ng mata, Sa paghiwa sa balat upang likhain ang mga talukap, Sa pagbuo ng balisa sa loob ng sugat.

Sa magandang bagay, ako’y hindi Ako, at ako’y nangungulila. Sa bawat pagkamangha, nawawala ako

At unti-unti akong yumayao. Kaya kaputanginahan ang pagsilay. Panandaliang pahinga ang pagpikit.

Ang pinakamasaya kong panaginip Ay isang mahabang daan Balot ng masukal na kakahuyan.

Marahan akong naglalakad pabalik sa simula. Parati akong bulag. Ngunit minsa’y nagiging ibon ang mga sanga’t

Inilalantad ang matayog na mga gusaling Kinakagat ng tanghali. Umiinit ang mga paa ko sa bangketa,

Nadarama ko ang mga parang At mga bakanteng lote. Ang pawis, luha, dugo

Ng bakang kinakatay ng matador. Dugong binyag ng toro sa katanghal. Kahit saan, walang paghilom.

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Panalangin

EDUARDO JOSE E. CALASANZ

hindi ako ang may hawak hindi ako ang may gawa hindi ako ang pinagmulan          ng mga simula

simulain Mo’y aking simula

pinaka-loob ko’y Iyong palabas           hindi panlabas           ngunit niloloob                 na palabas

labas-loob Ka walang-tigil na bumubukal

1988

[harayafilipinopoetry]

The Washerwomen

SIMEON DUMDUM, JR.

Their feet disappearing in the water, they wade knee-deep talking about the river.

The waters, white around stones, creep from their feet the color of cream. The women weep

Remembering their lives, the scheme that assigns them to this stream,

where they dip the clothes and squeeze them with the strength they love with, their skirts at ease.

They are washed inside and out. They cannot shout.

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Rain

DANTON REMOTO

This morning, it is raining in my country. Water slides down the leaves like tongue on skin. The sound of their falling collects like breath on the lobes of ears.

You are a continent away. There, the leaves are beginning to turn. Soon, night will steal hours from day, and snow will be whirling in drifts.

But you are here, in the country of my mind, wiping away the maps of mist on the window pane, lying in bed beside me, as the pulse of the pillows and sheet— even the very throb of rain— begins to quicken.

1991

[harayafilipinopoetry]

14

JOSE GARCIA VILLA

In my desire to be Nude I clothed myself in fire:— Burned down my walls, my roof, Burned all these down.

Emerged myself supremely lean Unsheathed like a holy knife. With only His Hand to find To hold me beyond annul.

And found Him found Him found Him Found the Hand to hold me up! He held me like a burning poem And waved me all over the world.

(Published 2008)

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Soledad

ANGELA MANALANG GLORIA

It was a sacrilege, the neighbors cried, The way she shattered every mullioned pane To let a firebrand in. They tried in vain To understand how one so carved from pride And glassed in dream could have so flung aside Her graven days, or why she dared profane The bread and wine of life for some insane Moment with him. The scandal never died.

But no one guessed that loveliness would claim Her soul's cathedral burned by his desires Or that he left her aureoled in flame… And seeing nothing but her blackened spires, The town condemned this girl who loved too well and found her heaven in the depths of hell.

1935

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Young Man In A Jeepney

MERLIE M. ALUNAN

Trapped in a conspiracy of chance we sit close inside this sardine can on wheels horning the gasfume streets

of this dust-tired afternoon. How your shoulders strain your shirt; a stray wind cools your sweat in my skin.

"This heat," I mutter, "melts the very bones," saying this as i feel inside me awakening

sweet April, fragrant May unfolding flower fingers on her lap. If she dares she might pass her cold palms

on your moist brow. My own hands competent and perfectly mundane clutch my little burdens close against my chest.

"I declare," a woman nods back, her grimace mirroring our transient common woe, "this heat does dry us all."

Do you hear her? On our faces ravished with their aging hope, Do you see the rogue crack

Like mortar on a weathered wall? At the stop you get off-- anchovy bodies come untrapped, shaken loose in the space

you emptied, your frail warmth is stuck in your wake, a trace above the indomitable dust, the iron smell of gas fumes.

I do not watch you turn the corner to the sudden dusk. But I smile to savor my sin in secret.

1988

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Deposition from the Cross

ALLAN POPA

[After Vasari]

Hearing your name you turn upward to the one carefully commending to your hands this body

whose weight in your arms you must commend to those below you or else the rung will

give from what you must bear yet you cannot move cannot turn toward the pit you cannot see the end of

as hearing your name you turn upward to the one commending to your hands this pendent body.

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Ang Imahen at ang Banidoso

JOSEPH GARCIA CASIMIRO

Kung handa kang tumalikod sa mundo Upang masarili ang sarili

Sa salamin tumalikod ka- Hapon ang isang binata sa mundo

Dahil sa pag-ibig nagpatihulog siya Mula sa tulay ang tulay

Ngayon sa pagitan ng iyong mga mata At mga mata ng iyong sariling sa iyo nakamata:

Huwag ka sanang mahuhulog

2009

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Corner House

VINCENZ SERRANO

A couple is waiting for their meal. There’s a drawing on the wall nearby. A family of six rides a motorcycle. Three children on the curb watch them pass. There’s a graffiti behind the children: the Statue of Liberty, but instead of a face—eye sockets, a hole not a nose, teeth. The man reads a magazine. The woman reads a book. The meal arrives: sandwich, soup. In my city, often, families ride motorcycles too, even on highways, where buses speed past. In provinces, to accommodate more, the motorcycle driver adds planks. The driver has difficulty balancing. Still, everyone moves forward, as wobbly as a country with too many children and not enough books, too many breaths and not enough meals. The man looks at his sandwich; he looks at her; he nods. On a seat next to the couple are magazine and book. Stasis is balance in disguise; it is wobble holding its breath: woman, teeth, sandwich, eye socket, motorcycle, country, man, soup, book, chair, magazine, children, table, curb, face. One moves. The other withdraws. Someone shifts. A motorcycle tilts. The curious gather and watch.

2009

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Pakiusap

NIKKA OSORIO

Hindi tiyak kung igagalang niya ang mungkahi na mahahayag sa pagbuklat sa kuyom ng rosas.

Sa isip niya, may lihim na ikinakalas sa marikit na buhol,

laberinto, maselang bulaklak na inuusisa ng sariling nagnanais marating ang ubod.

Sabihin mo, patatawarin, hindi patatawarin.

2011

[harayafilipinopoetry]

On Involvement

MARK ANTHONY CAYANAN

In another town, people are being transformed

into statistics by bullets. A minute past, and there are enough:

an Important Issue.                              Meanwhile, you are

hunched over your desk: A coincidence possible

only by virtue of this poem. How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses, a dilemma already said, yet you want it

asked by yourself, the throat from which it issues

an available difference. Meanwhile,

you hover like a ghost whose repetitious message

is frustration.                    Always there are no words:                                                               A statement that makes this poem

a contrivance, though not in the way all poems are unnatural,

also not in the way all poems wish

to call attention to themselves.                                              People are dying. People are

dead.          In time this would get to you, the mind choked

by diatribes, most of them sincere. By the time this gets to you

some other source of trouble would have                                                               pressed its barrel                                                                                           against your head,                                                   an unwarranted metaphor

because it is metaphor. Not that you don’t deserve it, but that

you do deserve it. A kind of guilt that lets you fall

asleep: From where you’re not, yours is a why or a yes that goes unheard,

which is             how it should be: this judgment that implies an ethical imperative:

you must accede. The consequence

a button pried off a shirt by neglect,                                                       which is to say constant

use, loosened from a world where you are bent

over your desk in a manner that’s not

even salacious, and you are thus convinced something

has to take place if it hasn’t just yet.                                                      How to end this poem without remorse, an easy echo                                   of its didactic overtones? With a question,

I suppose: notice how the phrase divorces utterance                                                                               and complicity, a disavowal worth another poem, without it.

2010

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Kundi Yaong Naglalaho

MIKAEL DE LARA CO

Ngunit walang nasalang ang kanyang mga daliring pilit lumalamukot sa dilim. Muli,

magsisimula siya sa dulo, magmumuni kung paanong ang lahat ng awit ay umuusbong

mula sa pangangatal ng katahimikan. Paanong tatanganan ang haraya?

Paanong pawawalan? At paanong titipuning muli, matapos ang dagliang pagsasatubig? Titindig siya,

lalapit sa bintana. Sa labas, umuuwi sa lupang tayantang ang marurupok na dahon.

At ang lupa, saan naman mananahan? Isasara niya ang bintana. Ititikom

ang mga labi, pipikit. Ano nga ba ang talukap kundi yaong naglalaho sa iglap ng pagdilat?

Tatangkain niyang tuklapin ang mga langib mula sa sugatan niyang pananalig.

May nagkukubling liwanag. May kumakawalang tinig. May iba pa bang anyo ang pananalangin? Ngunit

walang nasalang ang kanyang mga daliri. Tahimik na nagpipinid ng malasakit ang bintana: sa labas,

hinahalukipkip ng hangin ang nahubdang mga sanga, hinihilom ang mga puwang sa alangaang,

payapang pinupunan ang bawat paglalaho.

2008

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Multiple choice

CONCHITINA CRUZ

1.

a. maybe yesterday, or the month before

b. right this minute, if only the unscheduled visit

c. it might be, would have, has been for quite some time

2.

a. in the car, when she was ten, her bathing suit wet under her shirt

b. in the unused room, bare, save for a mosquito net and a reading chair

c. in the cafeteria, provided there was enough light

3.

a. yes—or no, according to her erratic sense of smell

b. of course, according to the poet’s rich vocabulary for certainty

c. if so, according to the pitiful graffiti

4.

a. the lack, like waking with an unexplained gap between the teeth

b. what pain, the words all familiar, the syntax askew

c. absence, minus the blindfold, still

5.

a. did it begin shortly after she took the elevator to the basement

b. did it begin when he fucked her against the piss-stained wall

c. did it begin without want, the conduct unbecoming

6.

a. because the book was turned to the page with the error

b. because the book was left with no note of apology

c. because the book was kept in the bedside drawer

7.

a. granted, the inevitable boredom that befalls

b. dispensing with the fanfare and charming indecision

c. why voice past argument why fervent or pressed to the ground

8.

a. because he found her sentences heavy on nouns rather than verbs

b. because he fucked her with blood abloom, the bruises flowering

c. because he wanted nothing else, nothing more than, none

9.

a. silent, on the matter of condoms in her purse

b. silent, on the matter of attention to upholstery

c. silent, on the matter of mysterious quotes

10.

a. "If you could only stop thinking of infidelity as a phase,

b. "What he meant by ‘their quiet expression of attachment’

c. "I didn't mean to interrupt—

11.

a. with a breakdown of bone: scapula, clavicle, sternum

b. with the mechanism that let me dream you alive

c. with my aversion to hints of faith in horoscopes

12.

a. she walked naked across the room without asking

b. she walked naked and without the slightest clue

c. she walked naked into the other woman’s closet

13.

a. in light of Tuesday’s unlikely events—

b. in light of the inconvenient matter of conscience

c. in light of her own laughter, sweet retrieval

14.

a. ask her to fill in the blank

b. ask her to read the display as warning

c. ask her not to say, not now or ever

15.

a. despite that, look at how the stitched heart—

b. because of, look at how the cowering heart—

c. why never, why ever—what heart—

2008

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Context

Jose Perez Beduya

I place the open book and my face above the street until the shadow of the earth forces the lamp lights on, and it becomes much blacker here in this box, this camera obscura, the print is barely understandable above the specter of the page, this dark returning much of the act of reading to the realm of the physical, although we know it is closer to painting made not senseless but more acute after the fact of film because the retina is after all a wall and light stops there and it is faith that continues, travels the length of the optic nerve. To correct the imbalance means that the room would have to find its reverse in the window and the man who is my looking, distracted by the noise of what goes on below, would have to lean across his desk to touch his flat, cold forehead against mine so that, in the shadow of the other, one of us might see the scenery

2003

[harayafilipinopoetry]

Liwasan

ALLAN POPA

Bumabalik ka sa lansangan nitong lungsod kung saan muntik kang maligaw sa kabataan, makaraang masaulo

ang pasikot-sikot ng mga kalsadang walang patutunguhan

kundi ang isa’t isa, bumabalik kang tila nawawalang muli upang maupo sa liwasan kahit walang katatagpuin

sa piling ng mga tulad mong hindi rin nais matagpuan

kahit panandalian habang walang-patid na pumapailanlang ang tubig na sinasahod upang walang-said na bumukal

dito sa puwang na inilaan ng batas, bukas sa lahat ng dako

anumang oras para sa lahat, kahit sa walang pag-aari walang malay sa sarili walang hiya walang dala mula sa nakaraan

kundi panganib na maibibigay mo sa iba at sa iyong sarili.

2007

[harayafilipinopoetry]

A Script: Beauty is the beginning of terror...

JESSICA HAGEDORN

1. The sea. 2. The disappearance of the sun. 3. My love is like red blood. 4. The Sky. 5. My eye. 6. That monster, sleep, is hungry. 7. Young girls’ faces. 8. White statues. 9. My love is like red blood. 10. Or I would die, the black revolver embracing me.

1968