Featured Poet
Yellow splendor over Pandami Isla
Large disc of gold on the dark, blue channel,
You watch, a solitary, lidless eye.
Radiance of heaven, goddess of our
nights,
Light of benighted sailors, dream-tired hearts,
You watch, a solitary, lidless eye.
Jewel of the firmament, diamond
of god,
Fire of our dreams, fire of our desire,
You watch, a solitary, lidless eye.
Two shadows on a shadowy vinta
Cross the channel, sea of forgetting,
You watch, a solitary, lidless eye.
A solitary, lidless eye, you watch
As the drama of their passions unfolds
On the dark water of their desiring.
Letter to Ling
...and my evening is all
That the lamplight encircles.
All the places and the future,
Those flaming ramparts
We thought lay beyond the horizon,
We have left them
Where we used to talk,
In the dilapidated school
House on the dream-sanctified beach,
When we were small.
My will is not the earth's magnetic core:
It cannot keep things
Where I want them to be.
My world has suffered an implosion,
But unlike a blackhole,
It does not attract
What I desire.
I'm writing to you to tell you
How like my falling hair
Things are falling away from me.
Indeed, like a tired planet,
I have lost my gravity.
And as I whirl daily in space,
Like one marrooned,
Things are flying away from me.
I have been flying, too,
Flying towards you,
But it only gives me this vertigo.
Tonight, across the light-years of your absence,
The silence in this room is made palpable
By the rasping of amorous lizards on the wall
The Dying Swan of Muddas
At Death's bidding music rises
From the soul to the parched throat
And now to the beak of lamentation.
The wild thick rushes cleave in the wind,
Cleave in the silver track of her passage
As she makes the final survey of the pond:
Rocks, springs, rivulets, the clear streams
Of home, secluded for ages from defile.
She swims to the edge of the playground,
She listens to the gambol of the cygnets
And sees the play of sunlight and water
As they paddle back and forth in silver down.
She swims back to the rushes, for the song
Is fast breaking from her breast.
They must not hear her sing,
Not on a morning like this, not on any day.
She hopes for no wind to carry the song
Beyond the wall of tall grasses,
Or else for a mighty gale to broadcast
Into the earless firmament
The song that Death bids her sing.
To A Tree Near A Boulevard
Greener of foliage, darker of bark,
Wider the spread of branches,
You were a struggling sapling
When I first sought refuge under your shade.
You've weathered tropical depressions
And the scuddling rains of thunderstorms.
Battered by winds and seasonal typhoons,
You have note cracked like the sea-wall.
Other trees, not you, in secluded
forests
Have fallen amidst the whirr of chainsaws.
The only signs of outrage are the ex votos
Carved heart-shaped round your gnarled bole.
No longer needing your shade for
my head,
Though my sore heart needs shelter from life-storms,
I have come with one foolish wish: Perchance,
Through sudden shower of pink-white blossoms
You would deign whisper to me
The mysteries of your charmed life.
A quarter of the sky is tangerine,
Darkening toward vermillion near the rim.
The birds have flown to roost
On the summit of the star-apple tree.
The mother cow is mooing to her calf,
Lost somewhere in the next pasture.
The crickets announce the end of day,
And incessantly the frogs agree.
The angelus bells have long been silent.
Mid-sky the half-moon is hazy in the solstice.
Darkness comes early when the sun is farthest.
But no, don't turn on the lights yet.
Look, the belated birds are still in the air.
Let the firmament finish its last lights.
Don't hasten the twilight to end the day.
Mauve is the sky before the sun
rises
From the nether part of the hemisphere.
Heiratic quietness reigns over the earth
Before birds descend in twittering drove.
Who sees the stars fade into yesterday?
Imperially yellow the street lamps burn.
The houses sleep, tenant-less at this hours,
(The hour the Tent-maker himself would rise.)
What you feel, behold and dream becomes yours:
Grass under bare feet, wind on naked skin.
Let through the iron gate the mountain breeze,
Let it make soothing music with the chimes.
Greet the relentless dawn the way birds do:
With zestful wings and unpremeditated song.
Anthony Tan, a native of Siasi, Sulu, is an awarded and nationally-published
poet, winning the Palanca for poetry and essay, and other major awards
for his creative writing. He holds a Ph.D in Creative Writing from the
Silliman University and is at present Professor of Literature at the MSU-Iligan
Institute of Technology. He has a book entitled "Badjao Cemetery and
other Poems". Another book "Poems for Muddas" is published
by Anvil. |
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