Good luck!
That the Philippines, and most parts of the other world that is not the West, are in the middle of change is obvious enough. Here at home, whatever the prognostications of pundits and critics, there is no telling what can happen between now and the near future—the next few weeks or months, or whether the present national leadership can last its term until 2010.
Or even what can happen in the middle of 12-round boxing bout Manny Pacquiao and that other guy (this is being written on the eve of the fight). A nation of adoring fans, hungry for a win amid daily, nay centuries of, losses of human dignity in the hands of mindless leaders stealing from the people or selling the national patrimony, and foreigners pillaging the national patrimony, await with bated breath the result of a gladiatorial sport.
I will watch the fight myself (and this piece loses its relevance tomorrow afternoon), the neighborhood gang had subscribed to a pay-per-view, they will put up a tent near one of the houses, switch on a big-screen tv, have breakfast and lunch together, and have the weekend beer and male bonding (the wives play mahjong and try to cheer with the husbands as the boxers exchange blows), win or lose. But the beer will be sweeter with a win.
But change, whether it comes from a knock-out or a putsch, in the ring or in the presidential palace, is both a fearful and inevitable thing. All presidential terms and boxing rounds end, by electoral knock-out or kidney punch or upper hook. And people like to see change happen, as spectators, or as direct actors. And because change is both fearful and inevitable, if for instance we are direct actors for it, we need all the help we can get, we arm ourselves with gun, prayer beads, amulets. Or we watch Pacquiao, win or lose, or we uprise against colonial masters, oppressors, deceivers, plunderers. Trouble is, when things settle, change is always for the benefit of the handlers. Change has been, and is always, defined, manipulated, directed, according to the terms and advantage of the very few.
modern remakes of Filipino amuletsAnd trouble is, if we read change as freedom, independence—political, economic, and cultural self-determination—we will find that it is not the reality under the present state of things, whether in the national, or the global, context. I will not go into that, people better-trained can explain that better.
What we know from what we see around us is that change, or its contemporary incarnation, “development,” is very different from the change needed by the vegetable-patch farmer, the “informal settler,” the street sweeper, the daily wage earner, the youth deprived of school, and the unschooled that must slave away in somebody’s kitchen, sweatshop or mansion because he or she has no choice. Choice, whether for a country or an individual, is a very important word.
When people are deprived of choice, because other people who have power over them keep them ignorant and hungry, change does not happen. Choice is not a luxury, it is a right. It is cold comfort that we can still choose to write poetry.
And here are two more poems. One from my friend Eric Gamalinda's book Amigo Warfare (Cherry Grove Collections, Cincinnati, 2007), for which I will break a rule of not seeking permission first before publishing the poem in these pages. I will send you a note on this Eric. And the other a new one from me.
Eric Gamalinda
Self-Portrait in Hell
I will build a wall around my past.
I will build a wall around my country.
I will build a wall around my memory.
I will set broken bottles on top of the wall.
Just like they do in my country.
I will spread thorns and nails and crowns of barbed wire.
I will put up a sign saying, It is forbidden to lean against this wall.
In that walled-up space I will let everything grow in wild abandon.
Weeds, snakes, mushrooms, worms, bacteria, orchids, hornets,
dragonflies, cockroaches, mosquitoes, maggots, rats.
The good will be few and dwindling.
The evil will devour the good.
Just like they do in my country.
I will walk away from the safety of remembering
but I will keep an amulet against those
who still covet the last things I carry:
I will bear my anger in silence.
I will lay down my heart in flames.
I will burn the sign of the cross on my forehead.
I will wear my country's desolation
as though it were tailor-made for me.
Over the years their meaning will wear out.
Only I will recall what they once stood for,
my anger, my cross, my heart of embers.
No one will ever recognize me.
(from Amigo Warfare, Cherry Grove Collections, Cincinnati, 2007)
Lost
(on the photograph by Jose Y. Dalisay)
1
Palm Sunday must just have passed
Or it is Good Friday now, the frond
Above her is only starting to dry.
It is the intense noon of three o’clock
After the Siete Palabras, when all
Children are warned not to speak
To spare the sleeping God His rest.
She is in a daze. Not that she would need
God’s death to help her slip into a stupor,
Or the noon pounding on her head.
Her mind has long been numb
Trying to figure the lines on her palms
Or whatever it is that has slipped out
Of her hold. Nothing bothers her. Not
Where she’s going, not where she’s been.
2
Even now, as she leans
For support against the wall,
In her green habito of St. Joseph,
Or some old Girl Scout,
She is a limp isosceles, her head
Nodding at the vertex, her feet
Slightly apart, drawing the base
That straddles the threshold.
Three planes intersect in her:
The void of light outside, God’s quiet
Afternoon of market stalls,
Triangle on floor, powerful medieval door,
And perhaps everything that is and is not
Her: the family that lost or abandoned
Her, the country that does not know about
Her, the hands that sew a nation’s flag
That is not about her.
3
There is no sun or star to mark
The corners of the triangle
That forms her
No eye of God
Tres personas, solo Dios
Nor caliper and rule
to triangulate her location
In the scheme of things
In the pyramid that has long
pinned her down like a paper weight
Acuta
Mactam anima sola
No flag or amulet or the flick
Of aspergillum of holy water
Can save her
From our eyes that turn away.
Marne L. Kilates
Feb. 11-March 6, 2008