Two Poems: A COUNTRY OF MY OWN & REKINDLED

A COUNTRY OF MY OWN

And I measured your symmetry
with a gaze or a look
every curve and every contour
or slope or a mountain that
I have conquered

I traversed your horizon
with just a blink of an eye
tamed and rode the four winds
galloping in your green stables

I crossed your rivers on carabao’s back
and lined the muses to know the secrets of your
first name and orient beginning

I learned your folktales and legends by heart
mythologized the loves and lives
of your sons and daughters in my verses
as if they were written a thousand years ago

I have lived to add colours, and lease of life
to your golden age and renaissance

I have lied a thousand times even more
for your histories to be heard
amongst your own people who are losing
their legacy and the salt of their tongue

you are within my grip Caboloan
Camelot of my imagination
you are the country of my own
right here in the province of my heart
when syllables palpitate like the breathlessness of turtledoves
where words are red wine flowing
like the blood in my myocardial arteries

let me hear once more the bamboo songs
the lover’s sonnets and serenades
the manag-anito and orisons o let me hear
even the silence of the hillocks
before I fall into my darkest night
before I soar into my dreadful flight

rise up Cabaloan and speak through my words
speak in your language dying for your rebirth
until your children learn to lend their ears

listen to the voice of their inmost selves
hasten to the quickening of their disquieted souls
speak before I give away my existence
and/or turn into a reed or a blade of grass


REKINDLED

There’s a rice-pounding song tonight playing
somewhere not to distant the hunter’s moon
bathe in all her glory unconcealing
the primeval dance of the gathering
where the reapers offer what they have sown
to the goddess of the earth and planting

I hear their silent chanting and singing
the last of the Tumatagaumen
with his uncouth and commencing
the rhythmic gyrations—the quickening
I see them all glistening flesh and worn
ere the embers consumed its own breathing

they touched me not softly with rememb’ring
this pagan ritual this primal passion
but the bardic voice within my being

there’s a rice-pounding song tonight playing
somewhere not too distant the reapers’ moon
will embrace my adamhood arising
they will hear me scream my
poems of hunting

Published in the Manila Times / Sunday Magazine, 13 March 2011