THIRD WORLD AND MANILAMANIC POEMS

CELESTIAL MECHANICS

A fiery sunset spendored with Pinatubo’s hues
silhouettes the mountains back of the barrio
A solitary Venus gleams bright against the glow
as if a manger were below in this sad land
and stars begin to speckle the inky eastern sky
which expands into a vast blackness
blazing with stars
with always more between those just seen
giving a count on infinity

The hamlet’s unlit but by lamps
warm kerosene and cooler Coleman glows
marking the humble abodes
staking out the darkening hill
untriangulated points of peopling
beneath the heaven’s eternal geometry
Night, pure night
inorganic as an arctic winter

A little more than two hours of blackness
nine O’clocking chronologically
the three quarters moon rises over Luzon
Its glow silhouettes the distant mountains of Laguna;
Macolod, Makilling and to the east sacred Banahaw
and soon illuminates the paths though the jumbled nipa huts
and I set out in the night’s morning
knowing my returning will be bright

The rebels in the mountains may be partying tonight
celebrating victories
mourning casualties
as only comrades can
in their uninebriated style
while the soldiers in the barrio drink free
on lowland Filipino hospitality
which they do not mistake for gratitude

Nice People Around contribute to the occasion
Mang Delano has some ducks the soldiers can shoot
victims for the also victimized
and he grills them after with his special BBQ sauce
and sends them back to barracks with doggie bags
and four long neck ESQ rhums

Higher up the moon looks almost full
the zenith will announce three AM
but before then
Ginebra San Miquel, warm Sprite and calamansi
dilute my blood
and invigorate my brain

Befuddled with the grammarless Tagalog
I try to communicate in
I state my final wisdoms
I have plenty and so must be choosey
no bureaucrat or academic’s so well endowed
or ultimately correct
when all is moot I shoot from the lip
at my addled audience

Near night’s noon I begin my way home
through the lifeless looking hamlet
though it’s not
I have refuge
safe houses here and there I’ve cultivated
and dogs that know me
My mind recalls the nursery rhyme
as I walk down paths in daytime
filled with laughing children
“Girls and boys come out and play
the moon is shining bright as day”

I reach the breezy shore
sit down and gaze
out at sea bright pitlamps blaze
a dozen bancas forming
a planetary system along the horizon
and in the morning
before the moon’s pale ghost sets
there will be fish in the market
and a new day to make sense of

 

 

RECENT ACCUMULATIONS AND APPROPRIATED VOICES, Kalayaan Publications, 1997

  

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