Into the Matter

By Octavio Paz


Roar of engines
                            swollen river
whiplashing whistles
                                      squeal of breaks
babble
              Flailing neon
knife wounds of electric light
Multicolored night
                                  decked with signs
blinking letters
the leering wink of numbers
Night of countless tits
and a single bloody mouth
cats in heat monkeys panicked
Night in the bones
                                  skeleton night
the headlights touch your secret plazas
the sanctuary of the body
                                              the ark of the spirit
the lips of the wound
the wooded cleft of the oracles

City
        heap of stones
in the sack of winter
Night grows
                      the tide grows
grim towers with fear at their throats
houses temples domes
                                        petrified time
great masses of dream and pride
winter brands them with its cruel irons
stones chewed to the bone
by the century and its acids
                                                  the nameless evil
the evil with all the names
                                                cyst
fixed
          in the marrow of iron
in the blind joints of stone

City
        a clock strikes
between your thighs
                                    too late
too soon
                Ages of smoke
battle in your skull
                                  in your bed
the doomed centuries make love in sorrow
City of indestructible façade
crumbling memory
your demented speech
                                        woven with reason
runs through my veins
your syllable ringing in my ears
your interminable phrase

As though suffering from loss of blood
the moon
rises over the rooftops
The moon
like a drunkard falls on its face
Stray dogs
pick the moon's bone clean
A convoy of trucks
runs over the bodies of the moon
A cat crosses the bridge of the moon
The butchers wash their hands
in the water of the moon
The city stretches out in its alleys
goes to sleep in the empty lots
the city has become lost in its outskirts

A clock strikes the time
                                          now it's time
it's not time now
                              now it's now
now it's time to get rid of time
now it's not time
                              it's time and not now
time eats the now

Now it's time
                        windows close
walls close doors close
the words go home
now we are more alone
The mind and its octopus scribes
sit down at my table
the court condemns what I write
the court condemns what I keep silent
Footsteps of time that appears and says
what does it say?
what are you saying? my thoughts say
you don't know what you're saying
traps of reason
crimes of language
you must erase what you write
write what you erase
the front and back of arthritic Spanish

Today one could say all the words
a skyscraper of bristling words
an enormous meaningless city
a grandiose incoherent monument
a miniature babbling Babel
others built you
the masters
the venerable immortals
seated on their rickety thrones
others made you the language of man
gibberish
crumbling words

Go back to the names
                                      the axis
the broad backs of this world
the shoulders effortlessly bearing time
Names
            the glass frozen glance
the wall no one's mask
the books with blank expressions
swollen with warring reasons
the servile table set on all fours
the door the condemned door
Names
              scuttled truths

Time is weightless
                                  and heavy-hearted
Things are not in their places
they have no places
                                  They are motionless
and moving
                      they spread wings
spread roots
                      claws and teeth
they have eyes and nails and nails and nails
They are real they are ghosts they are bodies
they're here
                      and can't be touched

The names are not names
they don't say what they say
I must say what they don't say
I must say what they say
stone blood sperm
rage city clock
panic laughter panic
I must say what they don't say
the promiscuity of the name
the nameless evil
the name of the evils
I must say what they say
the sanctuary of the body
                                              the ark of the spirit



From 'Collected Poems: 1957-1987'
Translated by Eliot Weinberger

Read about Octavio Paz

Ang Siyentista

Ni Carlos M. Piocos III

Kinakailangan lamang ng dalawang tao
upang tuluyang mapaguho ang buong mundo.

At dito, sa loob ng iyong kuwarto,
tayo, tayong dalawa,
mga paham ng matatandang kaalaman,
ang magtatakda sa tadhana ng malawak nating uniberso.

Ngayong gabi, patutunayan ko sa iyo ang kapangyarihan
ng agham ng pagsasanib ng katawan, dito,
dito sa kuwadradong espasyo ng ating higaan.

Ito ang puwersa ng grabedad,
dalawang nag-aatubiling kamay sa balikat.
Halika: ang dikta ng puwersa,
humiga ka muna nang tama
ayon sa posisyon ng mga planeta’t tala,
bago natin simulan ang rebolusyon
sa kalawakan ng iyong kama. Astrolohiya,
o pagmamapa ng tamang galaw,
ng tamang ikot, ng tamang indayog
sang-ayon sa halina ng makikinang na araw
sa loob ng iyong mata: ang sentro ng galaksiya.

Susukatin ng aking daliri ang milya-
milyang agwat ng iyong labi,
ang heyograpiya ng katawang malikot
at walang tinag sa aking yakap.
Dito ang guwang ng balat,
ang pagwawatak-watak ng kalupaan,
ang mga maliligalig na kontinente kapag lumilindol
at nanginginig ang nagpupuyos na dibdib.
Dito ang lalim ng karagatan,
dito ang taas ng mga bundok,
dito ang dilim ng liblib na mga pook,
kapag lumalalim ang paghinga sa pagtulog.
Pag-aaralan ko ang mga kalamidad ng kalikasan,
ang mga sakuna, ang mga sinalanta
ng iyong pagtutulug-tulugan.

Ipaunawa mo sa akin ngayon ang kauna-unahan
at pinakamahalagang batas ng pisika:
Ang anumang puwersang ilalapat
sa kahit anumang bagay ay may katumbas
na puwersang manlalaban: parang siyensiya ng digmaan,
parang diyalektikang walang hanggan.

At ipapaunawa ko sa iyo
ang hiwaga ng mga kimika
sa hinalong gayuma ng aking bibig:
pakiusap, kahit isang halik.
Sapagkat ang aking laway ay gasolina
sa loob ng iyong bunganga,
at sasabog sa iyong puso
ang matagal nang naibaon na granada.
Ang bombang sisira sa buong daigdig
ay naisilid lamang sa loob ng iyong dibdib.

Tutuklasin natin ang sikretong mahika
ng matanda’t lihim na siyensiya ng alkimiya:
tingnan mo, tutubog ako ng isang butil ng ginto,
ng isang busilak na bagong-mundo,
sa dulo ng iyong dila.

Mula sa Rupero

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Madalas sa madalas, tuwing tayo'y nag-uusap,
di ko mawari kung sino ang iyong nakikita
bago mo pa isa-isahin ang plastik na butones,
bago mo tanggalin ang tupi ng aking mga manggas.

Dahil kapag niluwagan na ang sinturon at nahulog
ang pantalon, nakakalimutan ang landas ng sapatos,
nawawalan ng kasaysayan ang dumikit na alikabok.
Iisang mata lamang ang malulusutan ng sintas,

ngunit pareho tayong nakapikit, natatakot
hubarin ang pinakahuling pilas ng damit.
Pawisan, balat sa balat, dagli tayong nagbibihis,
sinusuot ang sari-sariling kamiseta ng hininga.

Dahil bago mo pa ako hinubaran sa tingin,
sinimulan na kitang unti-unting tastasin.


Translation: 'From the Hamper', with pictures

Kay Leonard Co

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

O mabunying kalupaan! Nasaan pa ang iyong dangal
Kung bundok mo’y mababa at ilog mo’y matumal?
Leonard Co


Walang mintis, káya niyang panglanan
ang mga halaman mula sa paanan
ng bundok hanggang gulugod — at pabalik.
Walang dawag at sukal na di kinilatis,

punong di inakyat, gubat na di binagtas.
Mula sa dahon, bulaklak, sanga, at ugat
humugot ng lunas para sa karamdaman
ng karaniwang mamamayan, ng taumbayan.

Hanggang sa hulí, nakalahad ang palad,
nakadipa tulad ng punong walang laban
nang tinutukan ng sundalong nagpaulan
ng bala at pumaslang sa guro at pantas.

Gaya ng ibang binhing pinitas nang di oras –
mag-aaral, aktibista, doktor, peryodista –
ganoon na lamang sinayang ang bunga
ng lubos na pagyabong at pamumulaklak.

Inuubos ang naiiwang nakikipagtuos
para sa dangal ng lupain. Ang bawat bayani
ay pinahahalik sa lupa ng mambubusabos,
ibig patahimikin. Ngunit paano mapapawi

ang ihip ng hangin kung mahahalinhan ng awit,
paano matutuyo ang ilog kung umaagos
mula sa bukal ang dugo? Kung tayo’y nakatindig,
sinong makatitibag at makapapatag ng bundok?

In the Café

By Louise Glück

It's natural to be tired of earth.
When you've been dead this long, you'll probably be tired of heaven.
You do what you can do in a place
but after a while you exhaust that place,
so you long for rescue.

My friend falls in love a little too easily.
Every year or so a new girl—
If they have children he doesn't mind;
he can fall in love with children also.

So the rest of us get sour and he stays the same,
full of adventure, always making new discoveries.
But he hates moving, so the women have to come from here, or near here.

Every month or so, we meet for coffee.
In summer, we'll walk around the meadow, sometimes as far as the mountain.
Even when he suffers, he's thriving, happy in his body.
It's partly the women, of course, but not that only.

He moves into their houses, learns to like the movies they like.
It's not an act—he really does learn,
the way someone goes to cooking school and learns to cook.

He sees everything with their eyes.
He becomes not what they are but what they could be
if they weren't trapped in their characters.
For him, this new self of his is liberating because it's invented—

he absorbs the fundamental needs in which their souls are rooted,
he experiences as his own the rituals and preferences these give rise to—
but as he lives with each woman, he inhabits each version of himself
fully, because it isn't compromised by the normal shame and anxiety.

When he leaves, the women are devastated.
Finally they met a man who answered all their needs—
there was nothing they couldn't tell him.
When they meet him now, he's a cipher—
the person they knew didn't exist anymore.
He came into existence when they met,
he vanished when it ended, when he walked away.

After a few years, they get over him.
They tell their new boyfriends how amazing it was,
like living with another woman, but without the spite, the envy,
and with a man's strength, a man's clarity of mind.

And the men tolerate this, they even smile.
They stroke the woman's hair—
they know this man doesn't exist; it's hard for them to feel competitive.

You couldn't ask, though, for a better friend,
a more subtle observer. When we talk, he's candid and open,
he's kept the intensity we all had when we were young.
He talks openly of fear, of the qualities he detests in himself.
And he's generous—he knows how I am just by looking.
If I'm frustrated or angry, he'll listen for hours,
not because he's forcing himself, because he's interested.

I guess that's how he is with the women.
But the friends he never leaves—
with them, he's trying to stand outside his life, to see it clearly—

Today he wants to sit; there's a lot to say,
too much for the meadow. He wants to be face to face,
talking to someone he's known forever.

He's on the verge of a new life.
His eyes glow, he isn't interested in the coffee.
Even though it's sunset, for him
the sun is rising again, and the fields are flushed with dawn light,
rose colored and tentative.

He's himself in these moments, not pieces of the women
he's slept with. He enters their lives as you enter a dream,
without volition, and he lives there as you live in a dream,
however long it lasts. And in the morning, you remember
nothing of the dream at all, nothing at all.


From 'A Village Life'

To Anoint the Repast, VIII

By Odysseus Elytis

Naked, in the month of July, high noon. In a narrow bed, between two thick drill sheets, with my cheek on my arm which I lick and taste its saltiness. I look at the whitewash opposite on the wall of my little room. A bit higher the ceiling with its beams. Lower the chest in which I have laid all my possessions: two pairs of trousers, four shirts, some underwear. Next to it, the chair with the huge straw hat. On the ground, on the black and white tiles, my two sandals. By my side I also have a book.

I was born to have just so much. Extravagant speech makes no impression on me. From the least thing you get there sooner. Only it is harder. And from the girl you love you get there too, but you have to know to touch her when nature obeys you. And from nature—but you have to know how to pull out its splinter.


From 'The Little Seafarer'
Translated by Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris

Read about Odysseus Elytis

Josephy Brodsky: "An Immodest Proposal"

"In my view, books should be brought to the doorstep like electricity, or like milk in England: they should be considered utilities, and their cost should be appropriately minimal. Barring that, poetry could be sold in drugstores...

"Now, poetry is the supreme form of human locution in any culture. By failing to read or listen to poets, a society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation—of the politician, or the salesman, or the charlatan—in short, to its own. It forfeits, in other words, its own evolutionary potential, for what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. The charge frequently leveled against poetry—that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic, and whatnot—indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.

"For poetic discourse is continuous; it also avoids cliché and repetition. The absence of those things is what speeds up and distinguishes art from life, whose chief stylistic device, if one may say so, is precisely cliché and repetition, since it always starts from scratch. It is no wonder that society today, chancing on this continuing poetic discourse, finds itself at a loss, as if boarding a runaway train..."


The following address was delivered at the Library of Congress, October 1991
From 'On Grief and Reason: Essays' by Joseph Brodsky

Read full lecture

Samantalang May Sinasamantala

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Paano, ang tanong mo,
maisusulat ang pulut-pukyutan ng liwanag
sa hamog ng bukang-liwayway,
ang huni at lagaslas ng tubig,
ang hanging bumubura ng dalumat
hanggang ang sarili’y magmistulang lambat—

paano, samantalang binabanat at hinuhukot
ng pabrika ang katawan ng manggagawa,
samantalang sinusugod ng sakuna
ang walang panangga habang binubulag
ng ilaw-dagitab ang siyudad, samantalang tumatagos
sa buto ang lamig ng makasariling lungsod:

samantalang may sinasamantalang
di man lamang makadungaw sa bintana
at magmasid, mamangha, at umawit
dahil walang laman ang sikmura,
pulubi’t palaboy ang mga anak,
at hindi na maibabalik ang oyayi ng inang
umuwi sa bansang bangkay na malamig.
Paano, ang tanong ko, maiiwasan ang himagsik?

Patrick White: 'Riders in the Chariot' (end of chapter four)

... She walked a little. The acid of light was poured at nightfall into the city, to eat redundant faces. Yet, she survived. She walked, in the kind of clothes which, early in life, people had grown to expect of her, which no one would ever notice, except in amusement or contempt, and which would only alter when they fitted her out finally.

Mrs Godbold walked by the greenish light of early darkness. A single tram spat violet sparks into the tunnel of brown flannel. Barely clinging to its curve, its metal screeched anachronism. But it was only as she waited at a crossing, watching the stream churn past, that dismay overtook Mrs Godbold, and she began to cry. It seemed as if the group of figures huddled on the bank was ignored not so much by the traffic as by the strong, undeviating flood of time. There they waited, the pale souls, dipping a toe timidly, again retreating, secretly relieved to find their fellows caught in a similar situation, or worse, for here was one who could not conceal suffering.

The large woman was simply standing and crying, the tears running out here and down her pudding-coloured face. It was at first fascinating, but became disturbing to the other souls-in-waiting. They seldom enjoyed the luxury of watching the self-exposure of others. Yet, this was a crying in no way convulsed. Soft and steady, it streamed out of the holes of the anonymous woman's eyes. It was, it seemed, the pure abstraction of gentle grief.

The truth of the matter was: Mrs Godbold's self was by now dead, so she could not cry for the part of her which lay in the keeping of the husband she had just left. She cried, rather, for the condition of men, for all those she had loved, burningly, or at a respectful distance, from her father ... she cried, finally, for the people beside her in the street, whose doubts she would never dissolve in words, but understood, perhaps, from those she had experienced.

Then, suddenly, the people waiting at the crossing leaped forward in one surge, and Mrs Godbold was carried with them. How the others were hurrying to resume their always importunate lives. But the woman in the black hat drifted when she was not pushed. For the first moment in her life, and no doubt only briefly, she remained above and impervious to the stream of time. So she coasted along for a little after she had reached the opposite side. Although her tears were all run, her eyes still glittered in the distance of their sockets. Fingers of green and crimson neon grappled for possession of her ordinarily suety face, almost as if it had been a prize, and at moments the strife between light and darkness wrung out a royal purple, which drenched the slow figure in black.


The Nobel Prize in Literature 1973: Patrick White

Almusal

ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Umuusok ang kape at may ngiting arnibal
ang pankeyk sa plato. Maliliit ang aking hiwa
sa mala-únang pisngi ng gatas, itlog, at arina.
Tumutulo ang pulut-pukyutan mula sa tinidor.

Sinasabayan ko ng kagat sa longganisang
mamantika't maalat ang bawat kimpal ng lamán.
Pinapahiran ng krema habang pinagmamasdan
ang mga bagong gising at pawisang nagjo-jogging.

Lumamlam na ang langit, kulay krim. Singgusot
ng kumot at kubrekama pagbangon natin kanina.
Pinagpag nang pinagpag ang telang may pinong burda
hanggang mawala ang lúkot ng pagkakayakap.

Pinulot ang biglang pinandirihang buhok sa punda.
Pagsintas mo ng sapatos, tinitigan ko ang kámang
unti-unting sinigâan ng araw. Ubos na ang sariwang-
pigâng dalanghita ngunit di nababawasan ang uhaw.

Ako at Ikaw

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Binabaan mo ako ng telepono, sa pagkukunwari sa katabi mong nobyo na hindi ako ako. Na kaibigan ako ng kapatid mo, na dati akong bisita sa bahay ninyo. Iba ang iyong sinambit sa naisingit mong mga bulong: May tao dito... Binuksan at ibinagsak mo pa nga ang pinto para tanungin ang natutulog mong kapatid. Kahit ako akala ko ibang tao na rin ako. Nakisakay at ibinaba ang telepono sa ikalawa kong tawag. Nakisama sa mga anino sa aking kuwartong pinid ang bibig dahil walang nauunawaan, hindi alam kung paano sila naging anino, kung bakit pagbukas ng ilaw, bigla silang naglalaho.


Lumabas sa High Chair Poetry Journal, 2008

Orka

Ni Miguel Paolo Celestial

Salin ng 'Killer Whales' na nilapatan ng tugma at sukat


Baybayin ng ningning ang itim na balat
ng nagsisilundag na karnerong-dagat.
Sa paltik ng buntot, nanalsik ang kislap.
Sa likot ng biyas: kutitap ng alat.

Malinaw ang araw, sumiya sa alon.
Walang giya'ng ulap na nagsisigulong.
Sa pampang, espuma'y di malikom-likom.
Sa laot nagpusod ang dal'wang daluyong.

Ang tubig sa tadyang, dagling sumagitsit.
Mga bula'y biglang pumutok sa bagsik.
Hiniwa ang dagat ng sundang-palikpik
ng mga balyenang may pokang pinuslit.

Nukol sa kawalan, ang tuta'y dinakmal
pagtalon ng orkang pinigta ng kinang.
Ang hiyaw-tilandoy ay muling humimlay.
Kumampay ang taghoy, nawalay sa langkay.

Ngumanga ang dagat, dambuhalang silà
ng gutom na orkang lumapa sa tuta.
Gapi't piping dugo'y dumanak, humupa.
Sumayaw ang araw. Humulaw ang nasa.

Nagpinid ang tubig. Sumaliw ang hangin
sa pintig ng dagat. Hawan ang tanawin.
Binura ng alon ang bakas-buhangin.
Layon ng baybayi'y humayo't humimpil.

Anino'y bumaling. Namusyaw, tumulin.


Inilathala sa 'Latay sa Isipan: Mga Bagong Tulang Filipino', 2007