more remembering

Today, two of my favorites from Philippine literature in English. Just because I miss those godawful Lit classes with amazing(ly crazy demanding) Pulan, stupendous(ly gay) Mark, political(ly berserk) Danton, subt(ly female) DM and silent(ly killing with her side comments) Rica. I may have been the class wreck, but still you people changed my life forever.

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Gabu
Carlos A. Angeles

The battering restlessness of the sea
Insists a tidal fury upon the beach
At Gabu, and its pure consistency
Havocs the wasteland hard within its reach.

Brutal the daylong bashing of its heart
Against the seascape where, for miles around,
Farther than sight itself, the rock-stones part
And drop into the elemental wound.

The waste of centuries is grey and dead
And neutral where the sea has beached its brine,
Where the split salt of its heart lies spread
Among the dark habiliments of Time.

The vital splendor misses. For here, here
At Gabu where the ageless tide recurs
All things forfeited are most loved and dear.

It is the sea pursues a habit of shores.

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Bonsai
Edith Tiempo

All that I love
I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.

All that I love?
Why, yes, but for the moment-
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son's note or Dad's one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

It's utter sublimation,
A feat, this heart's control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand's size

Till seashells are broken pieces
From God's own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.

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For more poems like these, check out The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in English from 1900 to the Present.

"...after all: only when a text is read does it begin to be written". - J. Neil C. Garcia