Mapangahas na gawain
ang pagsulyap.
Akong lihim na nakatitig
ang siyang naghuhubad.
Kung may pamaypay
lang sanang hawak,
May damdamin nang nailahad
Sa mabilis na pagkumpas.
Kung may burdado akong panyo
Kulay puti at mahalimuyak,
Ihahaplos sa magkabilang pisngi
Bilang tanda ng pagtatangi.
Ngunit walang pamaymay na nangungusap
Habang nilalaro ng aking mga palad.
Walang panyo na sana’y mapupulot
Kung sa paanan ihuhulog.
Nagkakasya ako sa pagtitig, pagmalas
Hubad na hubad,
Kahit hindi tiyak,
Kung may masusulyapang paglingap.
(Ika-24 ng Marso 2005)
*Ang “wika ng pamaypay at panyo” ay mula sa lektyur ng aking guro at kaibigan na si Dr. Nicanor G. Tiongson. Nagpapasalamat ako sa pagbibigay niya ng panahon na makonsulta sa araw ng Huwebes Santo para sa tulang ito.
Glance*
This business of the glance
Is audacious work, indeed.
I, who am giving the secret look,
Am the one baring myself.
If I just had a fan
In my hand,
I’d be able to express what I feel
With a flick of the wrist.
If I had an embroidered hankie,
White and perfumed,
I’d dab it gently on either cheek
To signal my choice.
But I have no fan to send signs with,
To fiddle with my hands.
No hankie hopefully to be picked up
If I drop it at my feet.
All I can do is look, observe,
All naked now,
Even if I’m not sure
I’d catch any interested glance.
(Translation by MLK)
*The “language of fan and handkerchief” comes from a lecture of friend and mentor, Dr.. Nicanor Tiongson. My thanks for his time and attention when I consulted him on a Holy Thursday for this poem. –JB
This “language” is the secret gestures and signals of courtship among young Spanish-era Filipinos, e.g., the special way a girl holds a fan—covering the mouth or close to the chest, or dropping a handkerchief—all of which the interested swain should be on the alert for. –MLK
Gémino H. Abad
Jeepney
Consider honestly
this piece of storm
in our city's entrails.
Incarnation of scrap,
what genius of salvage!
Its crib now molds our space,
its lusty gewgaws our sight.
In rut and in flood,
claptrap sex of traffic,
jukebox of hubbub—
I mark your pride of zigzag
heeds no one's limbs nor light.
I sense our truth laughing
in our guts, I need
no words to fix its text.
This humdrum phoenix in our street
is no enigma.
It is a daily lesson of history
sweating in a tight corner.
Its breakdowns and survivals
compose our Book of Revelation.
It may be the presumptive engine
of our last mythology.
Look, our Macho Incarnate,
sweat towel slung around his neck.
He collects us where the weathers
of our feet strand us.
His household gods travel with him,
with the Virgin of Sudden Mercy,
Our Collective Memory, he forgets
no one's fares. Nor anyone's destiny.
See how our countrymen cling
to this trapeze against all hazards.
All our lives we shall be acrobats
and patiently survive.
Our bodies feed on proximity,
our minds rev up on gossip.
We flock in small spaces,
and twitter a country of patience.
Here is our heartland still.
When it dreams of people,
it returns empty to itself,
having no power of abstraction.
Abandoned to itself
and in no one's care,
jeepneys carom through it,
our long country of patience.
Nights I lie awake, I hear
a far-off tectonic rumble.
Is it a figment of desolation
from that reliquary of havoc,
or, out of its dusty hardihood,
that obduracy of mere survival,
a slow hoard of thunder
from underground spirit of endurance?
(from In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics, 1973-2003, University of the Philippines Press, 2004)
