santiagobvillafania

Santiago B. Villafania

Sapphics

1.

O my heart whose fire
is cocooned in my darkness
open so beautifully
for a love divine!

O my soul whose brilliance
is hidden in a rose
burnen O burnen
for a beauty divine!

2.

the heart is a face
whose eyes are brighter than God's
first bright skallywag

the heart is a who
whose inmost is the cause of
man's immortal woes



Vox Pangasinense

1.) The Tumatagaumen

they disappeared one after the other
like epiphytic plants that once cupped
the breasts of our virgin forests

the muses left their sun-flowered brae
when they heard no more the stories
and the brown songs of Caboloan

the ricefields turned from green into gray
without laughter    without poetry
not even a day of remembrance

they went away into silence
leaving their random biographies behind
unsigned in the province of our minds

now they are still forgotten
until we learn how to remember
and reclaim what is ours to reclaim

their place in the history of the living

2.) The Umaanlong

you left us with naught but remnants
of your past lives in earthen jars

your poems are flowers in the wind
that we no longer remember

you have no marble monuments
no monolith or obelisk

no remembrance of your prowess
but names in ancient syllables

your drowsy songs outlived your youth
though we sing them now at the wakes

and the spirits of your rice wine
too bitter now for our own taste

and the cup of your last supper
that too is buried with your earth

this is how you abandoned us
here in the crescent land of salt

3.) Pangasinan

here in the captive country of my heart
there is no bardic voice or Catullus
or a tenth muse to climb its Parnassus

and so i carry this primal passion
to paint with words and colours to reclaim
the emerald days of Caboloan -

its histories and legends written on
the translucent pages of oblivion
till i fall with years haply forgotten

my memory grey with uncovering
the fulcrum of my orient beginning
and the beauty of my unBabeled tongue

in time perhaps they will remember me
in Parthenons i will build for poesie



How to Find Your Niche on Philippine Literature

you will have to unspeak your mother tongue
bare yourself before the eyes of vultures
deitified by their minions and compeers

say your prænomen in glossolalia
until it bleeds on paper ritualized
beyond its imaginary borders

or swear allegiance to the republic
uniting our indigenous nations
without the poetry of diversity

or there is this place called Conspiracy
where poet-regionnaires gather to contrive

who to assassinate with vers libre
with beers libre and philo-sophistry

indubitably it’s not that cheesy

Swansong of the Sea

that night i heard the swansong of the sea
the erolalias of nameless lovers
stealing a heaven and eternity

there was a crysong of a pilgrim bird
that punctuated the silence of the night
but the winds and the waves whispered a hush

i waited for the waking of the day
feeling the breathing of the earth beneath
the palpitations of the Milky Way

then Atlas moved a finger and it came
the gyrations and the sudden trembling
O the sea had wings of a tsunami!

death came without warning or a reason
to those who heard the psalms of oblivion

and then i heard the swansong of the sea
...and the crysongs of those who went away