Three Nights in Venice

By Miguel Paolo Celestial

The people clear the piazza
as the drizzle breaks into steady rain.
Huddled into the ferry
I watch the waves heave, turn
with the approaching shadows of dusk.

Earlier I was at the cathedral
gazing at an immense relief of Byzantine saints,
their garments encrusted with jewels.
The gems gleamed as if newly unearthed
blunt with a light faint
and floundering in the darkness.

The wind passes by me as I return to the hotel
the rain still drizzling
the buildings on the street stoop damp and reticent.

The lampshade soothes the light in the room
but the silence laid like a weight on pillows
and twisted tight under sheets simmers.
There is a tremor buried in the breathing.

After lunch we brought back soup
from a restaurant down the street.
My father was propped up on the bed
and slowly, as I picture my mother raise the spoon
my head sinks into the pillow.
I return through the ripples of the bright emerald canals
to a few days before: a hotel room in Florence,
raised voices, and a diamond ring flung.

Yesterday I came from the island of Murano.
Standing in front of the furnace I felt the heat
flush to my cheeks as the molten glass
emerged from the kiln.
From the glowing mass
the limbs of a horse were plied,
braced at mid-gallop.
Hewn by the light
the glass danced with the hint of jewels.

Its flanks were tensed with the sound of crashing hooves.


Published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, 2003

Killer Whales

By Miguel Paolo Celestial

The coat of seal pups is sleek with salt sheen
their hair shines newly oiled
as they play on the shore flipping their tails.
The arch of the sun bends on their young backs.
Their trust tethers them to safety.

The day is clear, the hour guileless and without wit.
The water rolls with the clouds.
Like an idea, purpose crests with a wave
a black blister moving like hot kelp.

The pups frolic on the stretch.
The tide laps their flanks. The foam
suddenly hisses.
The mother cows are heavy with attention.

The whales rise like bubbles.
The sea opens with fin knives.
A pup is carried away like a cub:
teeth on the loose flesh of the nape.

Death is far away.
The whale flings the pup into the air
and catches it,
belly and tail splashing.

Its cries fly flockless.

A pup that has disappeared
is brought back.
It resurfaces as if borne by the sea
and now discovers land.
Its mother still waits on the quiet sand.

The sea closes. Clouds rush with the tide.
The day is unconcealed.
Shadows turn and are gone.


Published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, 2001
Translated into Filipino as 'Orka', set to rhyme and meter

Nadine Gordimer: Writers and responsibility

"The writer is eternally in search of entelechy in his relation to his society. Everywhere in the world, he needs to be left alone and at the same time to have a vital connection with others; needs artistic freedom and knows it cannot exist without its wider context; feels the two presences within - creative self-absorption and conscionable awareness - and must resolve whether these are locked in death-struggle, or are really foetuses in a twinship of fecundity. Will the world let him, and will he know how to be the ideal of the writer as a social being, Walter Benjamin’s storyteller, the one ‘who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story’?"


Read the entire lecture: 'The Essential Gesture: Writers and Responsibility' (October, 1984) by Nadine Gordimer

Transit

By Miguel Paolo Celestial

It was after supper
when our family rode the tram
back to the city — to the streets
and the lights and to sleep.
I was at the window seat
pressing my head against the glass
as I usually did to look outside.

I saw you leaning against your window
your seat facing us
on your side of the tram.
You were gazing outside
the lights zooming past your eyes
stilled as if by the speed of the wind
and the blankness of uninterrupted light.
Then you looked at me
like a gaping hole

as if you understood
that after supper
walking out of the tavern
with music trailing our stride
under lamplights
I felt as empty as the streets.

And I wondered how much of it you saw
but you turned back to your window
and stared through the darkness.

The streetlamps stood still.


Published in Heights magazine, 2000
Translated into Filipino as 'Pasada', set to rhyme and meter

Isang kuwadro ng papel mula sa aking kapatid

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Isang kuwadro ng papel mula sa aking kapatid,
na ginagamit ng mga sekretarya sa opisina
bilang bilin at paalala: ito ang kanyang ginamit
upang muling magpaalam at mag-iwan ng mungkahi,
halik, isang piraso ng kaniyang sarili na sanay
na niyang ipamahagi sa nangangailangan:
pahina man ng kaalaman, puting tuwalyang
pamunas ng pawis, o panyong pamahid ng dumi
at luhang di nagtatagal sa pisngi.
Hinding hindi bilang puting watawat,
kundi bungisngis ng kapuspalad.

Mayroong mga salitang di makasusulat ng tula

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Mayroong mga salitang di makasusulat ng tula,
parang mga ulap na di makagagawa ng ulan.
Kay haba nitong mga araw na may abo sa lalamunan,
na naliligaw sa bangketa tulad ng kuting na inulila.


There are words that cannot pick themselves up into poems,
like clouds too weak to gather enough gray for rain.
These days have been endless, choked with ash in the gullet;
wandering the street, lost like an abandoned kitten.

Tuwing Umuulan at Kapiling Ka

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial


Humahampas ang bagyo, di tayo magkarinigan.
Ilang pintig ang inagaw ng kulog. Sinasalat ko sa dilim
ang iyong pulso. Di mo pinapansin, haplos ng anino.

Walang makita sa kalsada, nakatirik ang trapik.
Kumikinang ang bintana sa dumadaloy na ulan.
Nalulunod ang busina. Marungis ang larawan sa salamin.

Pagharap ko muli sa silid, walang nasisilayan sa biglang
liwanag ng kidlat. Makapal pa ang putik sa baha
kaysa sa alaalang bumabalik lamang tuwing sakuna.

Walang Mukha

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial


Itong umagang galing sa panaginip
na may marahang init at simoy
na bumubulong ng mga pangalang
matagal nang nalimot at naitiklop
sa mga dahong ngayong bumabalik,
kasama ng usok ng ihawan,
kumaluskos kasabay ng tsismis
ng pulutong sa sidewalk.
Banayad ang liwanag na bumibilad
sa mga paslit at nagpapakinang
sa sabon-panlabang isa-isang
nabubuo at pumuputok ang bula,
saglit na bahaghari ng alaala.

Hinubad niya ang lahat ng kanyang damit

ni Miguel Paolo Celestial


Hinubad niya ang lahat ng kanyang damit — ng matandang lalaking
nakasalubong ko sa locker room ng gym — nagbuntong-hininga
sa harap ng timbangan, may uban sa likod bukod sa bumbunan.
Napabulong ng mura o maaaring taimtim na dasal para sa kanyang sarili
o sa mga anak at apong sa sandaling iyon gusto niya munang kalimutan
makabalik lamang sa kanyang lumipas at ngayo'y inaasam na pagkabinata.

Leavetaking

By Günter Grass


I dreamed that I must take leave
of all the things that surrounded me
and cast their shadows: all those possessive
pronouns. And of the inventory, list
of diverse things found. Take leave
of the wearying odours,
smells, to keep me awake, of sweetness,
of bitterness, of sourness per se
and the peppercorn's fiery sharpness.
Take leave of time's ticktock, of Monday's annoyance,
Wednesday's shabby gains, of Sunday
and its treacheries, as soon as boredom sits down.
Take leave of all deadlines: of what in the future
is to be done.

I dreamed of every idea, whether stillborn
or live, of the sense that looks
for the sense behind sense,
and of the long-distance runner hope as well
I must take leave. Take leave of the compound interest,
of saved-up fury, the proceeds of stored dreams,
of all that's written on paper, recalled as analogy
when horse and rider became a memorial. Take leave
of all the images men have made for themselves.
Take leave of the song, rhymed bellyaching, and of
voices that interweave, that six-part jubilation,
the fervour of instruments,
of God and Bach.

I dreamed that I must take leave
of bare branchwork,
of the words bud, blossom and fruit,
of the seasons that, sick of their moods,
insist on departure.
Early mist, late summer. Winter coat. Call out: April April!
say again autumn crocus and may tree,
drought frost thaw.
Run away from tracks in the snow. Perhaps
when I go the cherries will be ripe. Perhaps
the cuckoo will act mad and call. Once more
let peas jump green from their pods. Or the
dandelion clock: only now do I grasp what it wants.

I dreamed that of table, door and bed
I must take leave and put a strain on
table, door and bed, open them wide, test them in going.
My last schoolday: I spell out the names
of my friends and recite their telephone numbers: debts
are to be settled: last of all I write to my enemies
briefly: let bygones be bygones — or:
It wasn't worth quarelling over.
Suddenly I have time.
My eyes as though they'd been trained
in leavetaking, search horizons all around, the hills
behind the hills, the city
on either bank of the river,
as though what goes without saying
must be remembered preserved saved: given up, true, but still
palpable, wide-awake.

I dreamed that I must take leave
of you, you and you, of my insufficiency,
the residual self: what remained behind the comma
and for years ha rankled.
Take leave of the familiar strangeness we live with,
of the habits that politely justify themselves,
of the bonded and registered hatred between us. Nothing
was closer to me than your coldness. So much love recalled
with precise wrongness. In the end
everything had been seen to: safety pins galore.
Lastly, the leavetaking from your stories
that always look for the bulwark, the steamer
out of Stralsund, the city on fire,
laden with refugees;
take leave of my glassware that had shards in mind,
only shards at all times, shards
of itself. Not that:
no more headstands.

And no more pain, ever. Nothing
that expectation might run to meet. This end
is classroom stuff, stale. This leavetaking
was crammed for in courses. Just look how cheaply
secrets go naked! Betrayal pays out no cut-rate prices.
At last advantage cancels itself, evens out for us
the balance sheet,
reason triumphs for the last time,
levelling
all that has breath, all things that creep
or fly, all that had not yet
been thought and was to be perhaps,
at an end, on its way out.

But when I dreamed that I must
take leave at once of all creation
so that of no animal for which Noah once
built the ark there should be a redolence,
after the fish, the sheep and the hen
that all perished together with humankind,
I dreamed for myself one rat that gave birth to nine
and was blessed with a future.


From 'Selected Poems 1956-1993'
Translated by Michael Hamburger

Etching of a Line of Trees

By John Glenday


I carved out the careful absence of a hill and a hill grew.
I cut away the fabric of the trees
and the trees stood shivering in the darkness.

When I had burned off the last syllables of wind,
a fresh wind rose and lingered.
But because I could not bring myself

to remove you from that hill,
you are no longer there. How wonderful it is
that neither of us managed to survive

when it was love that surely pulled the burr
and love that gnawed its own shape from the burnished air
and love that shaped that absent wind against a tree.

Some shadow's hands moved with my hands
and everything I touched was turned to darkness
and everything I could not touch was light.


Extract from 'Grain'

Bago at pagkatapos

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Para akong nilalagnat, di mapakali. Nangangati ang talampakan, kinakati. Meron akong sakit na walang lunas. Para akong latak na iniwan ng baha, malagkit at mamasa-masa. Nauuna sa aking hininga ang kabog ng aking dibdib, di sa kaba kundi sa itim at matapang na kape. Di nauubos ang askal sa kalye, galisin at nagdadala ng rabis. May epidemyang dala ang ganitong mga gabing gutom, di maaaring mabusog.

. . . . . . . . .

Ipinagtabi niya ang aking sepilyo sa kanyang sepilyo, malapit sa hugasan ng pinggan, sa ikalawa kong bisita sa kanyang condo. Ngayon, makalipas ng tatlong pagtatagpo - umagang may halik sa pisngi at balikat - ilang araw na itong tuyo sa kinalalagyan. Hindi ko alam kung nabasa ang kanyang pisngi nung gabing tinalikuran ko siya at di na binalikan, nung pilit niyang pigilan ang daloy ng mga salita at nagmamakaawa ang katahimikan ng kanyang silid. Ilang araw nang nadadampian ng ambon ang aking paggising. Ilang araw nang puyat ang liwanag, di makabangon, di marunong humingi ng tawad.