Subterranean
Let me be the first to say
that I know the name for everything
and if I don't I'll make them up:
dukkha, naufragio, talinhaga.
Just like the young
whose hearts give no shame,
I love the excesses of beauty,
there is never enough sunlight
in the world I will live in,
never enough room for love.
I fear none of us will last long enough
to prove what I've always suspected,
that the sky is a membrane
in an angel's skull,
trees talk to each other at night,
ice is water in a state of silence,
the embryo listens to everything we say.
I am afraid for the child skipping rope
on the corner of my street,
the girl on the train with flowers in her hair,
the man whose memory is entirely
in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness
when I go to sleep, or that in my sleep
I will grow old and forget how desire
once drove me mad with wakefulness.
Just like the perfect seasons
they will die
and I will die
and you will die also;
no one knows who will go first,
and this is the source
of all my grief.
Eric Gamalinda
***
mga prends, tuloy n'yo naman IntPoWriMo Renga natin. Thought Parade naman d'yan, o. :)
Renga # 24
When you were taught about veins,
you noticed how they mimicked
the roots of trees.
Delivering silent stories,
pages falling, myths.
Once, there throbbed within
the twisted body of the Balete tree
living fire.
This much I know:
this world was made for keening:
heart water leaping
through body's hearth
smoke seeks earth seeks sky
Fire's ghost can never be held
but how it dances
the slow waltz into fading wisps of ash,
into smoke faintly holding into silhouettes
of bodies now gone.
martin, ria, ramblingsoul, PS Eliot, kuwabatake
