Balikbayang Mahal, Passages From Exile

E. SAN JUAN, Jr.
________________________________________
BALIKBAYANG MAHAL
Passages from Exile
LuLu
North Carolina
Copyright E. San Juan, Jr. 2007

All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-4303-2744-8
Published by LuLu.com
LuLu Enterprises, Inc.
860 Aviation Parkway, Suite 300
Morrisville, North Carolina 27560
www.lulu.com
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Voyages
Tag-sibol sa Den Haag, Nederland, 25 Marso 2007 9

The Three Temptations
Balikbayang Sinta
13
18
Maskara ng Makata
26
Kalatas Mula sa Anghel ng Anunsiyasyon

Piet
30
34
Skindiver in an Odd Angle Stance
35
Biyernes ng Hapon, Oktubre 1, 2005

Salamisim
36
38
The Sweetheart of Ludwig von Wittgenstein

To Bella
42
43
Nagsangang Batis sa Pugad ng Iyong Pilik-Mata

Arkitektoniko
45
47
Vicissitudes of the Love and Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky

Querida Mia
57
Megamall sa Metro Manila

The Tarantula
63
Punta Spartivento
The Seduction
59
65
69
Romance of the Bourgeois Poet
71
Siyam na Awit ng Pag-ibig at Isang Interbensiyong Dalit

ng Panibugho
72
49
Labintatlong Pagsubok sa Pagtuklas ng Anino ng Kagandahan
90
.Nascitur 92
Ay, Naku, Muntik na Akong Makalimot 93
The Way Things Are
97
Cadenza to Three Fabulous Sisters

Lagalag sa Makati
98
100
Dialogue in the Dark
104
Even as far as Ashley, North Dakota, Where You Were Born
106
The Lovers Address 111

Kung Ano ang Isinisiwalat ng Salawikain
Finita La Commedia
112
114
Only A Moment Ago
117
The Dandys Smile from the Boogie-Woogie Planetarium
118
Adios, Mariquita Linda 119

Hail and Farewell
121
SA LOOB AT LABAS NG BAYAN KONG SAWI: Emergency

Signals from a Filipino Exile
Puro Salita, Kulang sa Gawa? 152
About the Author
153
122
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following scholars and editors for their
translations or adaptations of poems included here: Dr. Vladimir
Makarenko (Russian), Wolfgang Bethge (German), Bruno Gulli
(Italian) and Dr. Zhang Zhi, editor-in-chief of The World Poets
Quarterly (formerly The Chinese Poetry International Quarterly
published in Chungqing, China), who ably supervised his
outstanding phalanx of Chinese translators. The author is
responsible for the other translations which follow the original
Filipino or English texts. Special thanks to Charlie Samuya Veric for
his extraordinary rendition of Siyam na Awit ng Pag-ibig at Isang
Interbensiyong Dalit ng Panibugho.
The poems in English were selected from the authors three
previous volumes: Godkissing Carrion and Other Poems (1964), The
Exorcism and Other Poems (1967), and The Ashes of Pedro Abad Santos
(1985). An alternative selection may be found in Balik-bayang Sinta:
An E. San Juan Reader, published in 2007 by the Ateneo de Manila
University Press. The poems in the original Filipino first appeared in
Alay sa Paglikha ng Bukang-Liwayway (Ateneo University Press, 2000),
Sapagkat Iniibig Kita at iba pang tula (University of the Philippines
Press, 2006), Salud Algabre at iba pang tula (University of San Agustin
Press, 2007); and in various journals in the Philippines, among them,
Bulatlat, Pinoy Weekly, Braso, Ani, Ideya and U.P. Collegian Literary
Folio.
The essay Sa Loob at Labas ng Bayan Kong Sawi:
Emergency Signals from a Filipino Exile has been undergoing a
passage of metamorphosis since its drafting in the seventies of the
last century. It first appeared as Fragments from a Filipino Exiles
Journal in Amerasia (1997) and revised as a chapter in From Exile to
Diaspora: Versions of the Filipino Experience in the United States (1998).
It was revised again and expanded for the U.S.-based Internet
journal, Our Own Voice, thanks to its editor, Reme Grefalda. The
latest version is that included in the aforementioned anthology of
my works, Balik-bayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader. For continuing
elaborations, see the websites The E. San Juan Archive and Himagsik
Kayumanggi.ESJ
VOYAGES
_______________________________________________________
To exile I ride on the bountiful surf. And foam-flowers
of her dreams gather to waylay my anchors.
Roots shall burst the shell. Burnt roots.
She wanders. Sunk in glaciers.
Plough.
Siren-song.
And seeds flower sibylwise to wake the sleeping

oracles of desire. Woven. Until the nets swing against
the rocks of her breast-hulls.
Weeds leagues-long, moored by tides and horned nightmares!
She summons her wild albatross-yield to the sargasso of her murmurings.
SEEREISEN
_____________________________________________________________
Losgelst von allem trgt mich die mchtige Welle.

Die Schaumblumen ihrer Trume sammeln sich, lsen meine Anker.
Wurzeln werden die Schalen durchbrechen. Verbrannte Wurzeln.
Sie streift lauernd umher, verschwindet in den Gletschern der See.
Pflgender Sirenengesang.
Sibyllinische Blumen erblhen und wecken die schlafenden Orakel
der Begierden.
Zu Netzen gewoben schlagen sie gegen den Fels des Nixen-Skeletts.
Tangstrhnen - wegstundenlang und festgemacht durch Gezeiten
und Alptrume!
Sie ruft ihre wilden Albatrosse herbei!
Gebt euch ihrem Sargossa-Raunen hin.
(Freie bersetzung: Wolfgang Bethge)
TAG-SIBOL SA DEN HAAG, NEDERLAND, 25

MARSO 2007
__________________________________________________________________
[For CPA]
Mula sa bubong ng simbahang Christus Triumfator sumungaw
ang araw at sa Pax Christi
sumikat
ang balintataw ng hatol:
Guilty! ang rehimeng U.S.-Arroyodeklara ng Permanent
Peoples Tribunal
Mainit na ang hipo ng amihan sa iyong pisngi, Karolina....
Nagtatangka nang bumuka ang buko ng mga bulaklak
sa pintuan ng Hotel Van Der Valk de Bijhorst
Subalit sina Ka Beltran, ang maraming kasama sa Tagaytay at
Muntinlupa ay nakabilanggo pa rin
Patuloy pa rin ang pagpatay at pambubusabos
Patuloy pa rin, sa kabila ng pagtutol, ang paglaganap ng dilim
Dito sa maaliwalas na lansangan ng Den Haag, walang dagundong
ng motorsiklo, walang mga taong naka-bonet
Walang baril na nakaumang sa pagitan ng mga hita ng dafodil
Ngunit bakit hindi panatag ang loob mo, Karolina?
Tumatagos sa buhok mo ang silahis, tumatalab sa pilat

ng sugat sa ulo
9
mong inupakan
at binasbasan ng teroristang Estado
Habang pinapakiramdaman ang gumigising at gumagapang
na risoma ng tulip
sa matris ng lupa
Unti-unting bumabangon mula sa panaginip
unti-unting bumubuka
At sa banaag ng pagdamay
masilayan ang iyong ngiti
Binabaklas ang tanikala ng bukang-liwayway ng iyong mga labi
Panahon na ng Christus Triumfator: bayang lumalaban!
[Amsterdam, Nederland, 3/26/2007
10
SPRING IN DEN HAAG, NEDERLAND,

25 MARCH 2007
_____________________________________________________
From the roof of the Christus Triumfator church the sun leaped out
and from the Pax Christi flashed
the judgment gaze:
Guilty! for the U.S.-Arroyo regimedeclared the Permanent
Peoples Tribunal
Warm is the north-eastern breezes touch on your cheeks,
Karolina.
Buds of flowers are plotting to open up
by the door of the Hotel Van Der Valk de Bijhorst
But Comrades Beltran and our brothers and sisters
in the Tagaytay military detention camp and in Muntinlupa
are rotting still in prison
The murders and abuses proceed as before
Despite protests, darkness continues to shroud our homeland
Here in the seemingly wide-open streets of The Hague,
not a sound of motorcycles
revving up, not a sign of killers wearing bonnets
No rifles sticking out from between the thighs of the daffodils
But why are you not at peace, Karolina?
11
Penetrating through the web of your hair, the suns rays also caress
the scar of the wound on your head
targeted and christened by the terrorist State
While apprehensive of the rousing of the tulips rhizome, crawling
in the earths womb
inch by inch rising up from dreams
slowly opening up
and in the radiance of our sharing
hoping to glimpse your smile--Your lips breaking apart the chains binding the mornings
sunburst
This is the time of Christ Avenging:
a rebellious people fighting back!
(Translated from the original Filipino)
12
THE THREE TEMPTATIONS

______________________________________________________
What death would you desire?

She says: A bronze death that yields
a cloister for the heart; or that
which is charter for a giant, a silver death;
or that for which one must labor:
ones sacrament, thats a death of gold?
Alas, how can your pilgrim choose?
Always theres the hissing of fire
On my neck creeps the salamander!
But here on this steadfast ground

earth whereon the mighty have fallen,
gnomes choir a bronze hymn to you
and yet could I but rear for myself
a giants head far from all solitude
O how the undines luster shall flood
into my silver sepulcher! For it is fate
out of gorges between sheer cliffs
that gives us wings for pilgrimage
13
and you who dance like a scented sylph

on the winds have not, have not
the golden character of grace
and should you but pray for me
a fine and private place plucked up
for this death, my death, thats golden
to you alone I give my only name
Oh, now, what death would you desire?
She says: There is only my embrace.
14
LES TROIS TENTATIONS

_______________________________________________________
Quelle mort dsireriez-vous?

Elle dit : Une mort en bronze qui produit
Le clotre pour le coeur, ou celle
Qui sont charte pour un gant, une mortargente ;
Ou cela pour lequel on doit travailler :
Un sacrement, cela est une mort dor?
Hlas ! Comment votre plerin peut-il choisir ?
Toujours il y a le sifflement du feu
Sur mon cou rampe le salamander !
Mais ici sur cette terre immuable
La Terre o le puissant est tomb
Le choeur de gnomes un hymne en bronze vous
Et je peut pourtant mais larrire pour moi
Une tte du gant loin de toute la solitude
O comment le lustre dundine inondera
Dans mon spulcre argent! Pour lui est le destin
hors des gorges entre les falaises vritables
Cela nous donne des ailes pour plerinage
15
Et vous qui dansent comme un sylphide parfum

Sur les vents nont pas, navoir pas
Le caractre dor de grace
Et si vous mais prier pour moi
Lendroit priv plum vers le haut de
Cette mort, ma mort, cela est dor;
A vous, seul, je donne mon seul nom
O, maintenant, quelle mort vous dsirerait?
Elle dit : il y a seulement mon embrassement.
(Translated from the original English text)
16
17
BALIKBAYANG
SINTA
________________________________________________________
Iiwan mo lahat ng iyong minamahal; ito ang palaso na unang
ipinawawalan ng busog ng pagkatapon.
--Dante Alighieri
I.
Lumipad ka na patungong Roma at London
Balisang nakalingon sa ulap lulan ng naglaboy na panaginip
Lubog sa alaala ng kinabukasang unti-unting nalulunod
Lumipad ka na patungong Riyadh at Qatar
Sa pagkamulat kukurap-kurap sa pagtulog pusoy nagsisikip
Binabagabag ng sumpang naligaw sa salawahang paglalakbay
Lumipad ka na patungong Toronto at New York
Tinutugis ang biyayang mailap nabulusok sa patibong ng banyaga
Sa ulilang pugad anong maamong pag-asa ang nabulabog
Lumipad ka na patungong Chicago at San Francisco
Kumakaway ka pa tiwalang may katuparang babati ng Mabuhay!
Alinlangang luhay naglambitin sa bahag-hari ng bawat yapos
Lumipad ka na patungong Hong Kong at Tokyo
Di kita malilimotpumaimbulog ang tukso ng nabitiwang
paalam
Nabakling pakpak usok sa bagwis inalagwang talulot ng bituing
nasunog
18
Lumipad ka na patungong Sydney at Taipeh

Ay naku, anong panganib ng gayumang sa pangarap nagkupkop
Ibon kang nagpumiglas alay moy talim ng paglayang nilalangit
Lumipad ka, O sintang mahal, ngunit saang kandungan ka lalapag?
Bumabalik sa dalampasigang hulog ng iyong hinasang pagtitiis
Aking kaluluwang hiniwat ikinalat sa bawat sulok ng daigdig
II.
Huli na raw ang lahat. Huli na, umalis na ang tren lulan ang
gunitat pangarap.
Huli na, lumipas na ang kamusmusan ng balikbayang naglagalag.
Huli na, naiwan na tayo ng eruplanong patungong Tokyo at Los
Angeles.
Huli na, nakaraan na ang oras ng kagampan at pagsisiyam.
Tumulak na, malayo na ang bapor patungong Hong Kong at
Singapore.
Nagbabakasakaling aabot pa ang kable-- Sayang, di biro,
nakapanghihinayang.
Huli ka na sa pangakong pinutakti ng agam-agam at pag-uulikulik.
Huli na, nahulog na ang araw. Itikom ang labi, itiim ang bagang.
Kahulugay naanod-lumubog sa dagat Sargasso ng
pagpapakumbabat pagtitiis
Pahabol ay di na magbubuhol--
Tapos na ang pagsisisit

19
pagpapatawad.
Walang taga-ligtas ang lalapag sa tarmak mula sa lobo ng iyong
pangarap.
Huli na nga, nakaraos na ang kasukdulan, di na maisasauli ang
naibigay.
Sinong manlalakbay ang magkakaila upang mahuli ang
katotohanan?
Mailap pa sa mabangis na hayop na nasukol, bumabalandra sa
rehas
Mailap pa sa hibong nagpupumiglasSaan ka nanggaling? Saan
pupunta?
Paos, hapo, dayukdok, gasgas ang sikot tuhod, gumagapang mula
sa guwang
Maghulihan tayo ng loob, Estranghera, hinihintay ang ligayang
walang kahulilip.
20
BALIKBAYAN BELOVED
_____________________________________________________________
You will leave everything you love; this is the arrow first released by the
bow of your exile.
--Dante Alighieri
I.
Youve flown to Rome and London
Anxiously looking back to clouds loaded with dreams wandering
Sunk in memories of tomorrow
slowly drowning
Youve flown to Riyadh and Qatar

On waking up blinking in sleep the hearts constricting
vexed by a vow lost in the flotsam and jetsam of the journey
Youve flown to Toronto and New York
Pursuing wild blessings
in a nest bereaved
plunged into the foreigners trap
what tame hope has been driven wild
Youve flown to Chicago and San Francisco

Waving afar trusting in a fulfillment that will greet you
Long Live!
Tears unmoored swing from the rainbow of every embrace
Youve flown to Hong Kong and Tokyo
Ill never forget youthe temptation of a farewell unclenched
soars
21
Wings broken feathers smoking floating petals of stars gutted

Youve flown to Sydney and Taipeh
Ay, alas, what danger of seduction from dreams
Bird struggling to escape
encompassing
offering the edge of liberty
adored
Youve flown, O beloved sweetheart, but on whose bosom

will you land?
You return to the seashore yielded by your sharpened forbearance
My soul cut up and scattered to all the corners of the planet
II.
Late, they said everything is late. Its gone, that train loaded with
memories and dreams
Late, they said its gonethe nomadic Filipina migrants innocence
is gone.
Late, weve been left behind by the airplane headed for Tokyo
and Los Angeles
Late, its overthe hours of an infants deliverance and funeral
dirges
Already departed
So distant now is the ship sailing toward Hong
Kong and Singapore

Taking a chance that the telegram will reachwhat a pity, no
kidding, a terrible waste
Youre lateyour promises rotting with anxiety and doubts.

22
Finished!
Too late, the sun has crashed! Close your mouth, squeeze your
jaws teeth
The sense of it all floats and sinks in the Sargasso Sea of
humiliation and sufferingits over
Postscripts will not tie the knotrepentance and forgiveness are
over
No savior will land on the airport tarmac from the balloon of your
hopes
Its over, the orgasms over, whats given cannot be returned
What traveler will disavow so as to catch the truth? Its finished
More slippery than the wild beast trapped, banging on
steel bars
Wilder than desire struggling to escapewhere did you come
from? Where are you going?
Hoarse, exhausted, starved, elbows and knees bruised, crawling
on all fours from the abyss.
Beloved foreigner, lets catch whats left inside, waiting for joy in
abeyance, nothing ahead or behind, endless.
23
LIEBLING
BALIKBAYAN
_________________________________________________________
Du bist schon nach Rom und London geflogen

schautest zurck zu den Wolken gefllt mit wandernden Trumen,
warst versunken in langsam sich lsende Erinnerungen an Morgen.
Du bist schon nach Riad und Katar geflogen

als du mit blinzelnden Augenlidern wach wurdest, war dein Herz
zusammengeschnrt vor Verdruss ber die trgerischen
Versprechungen einer falschen Reise.
Du bist schon nach Toronto und New York geflogen

von besten Abschiedswnschen begleitet bist du in die fremde Falle
geraten, die kleine Hoffung hat dir dein Nest genommen.
Du bist schon nach Chicago und San Francisco geflogen

deine Arme winkten, du hast den Willkommen Vertrauen
geschenkt, doch hingen an den Regenbgen der Umarmungen auch
Trnen des Zweifels.
Du bist schon nach Hongkong und Tokio geflogen

Ich werde dich nicht vergessen - schner Worte des Abschieds
tropften, zerbrochene Flgel, im Rauch trieben launisch die Zacken
flackernder Sterne.
24
Du bist schon nach Sydney und Taipeh geflogen

Oh je, wie doch die Gefahr der Verfhrung die Sehnsucht dir bindet,
du bist ein zappelnder Vogel in den Krallen der Freiheit, die in den
Himmel hobst.
Du bist geflogen, oh teure Geliebte, aber in welchem Herzen wirst
du endlich landen?
Wenn du ans Seeufer zurckkehrst, befreit von langer Ausdauer,
wirst du meine Seele zerschnitten und zerstreut in allen Winkeln der
Welt finden.
(Translated by Wolfgang Bethge)
25
MASKARA NG MAKATA
_______________________________________________________
Wala, walang hugis ang aking mukha
At wala ring pangalan
Ang aking pagnanasa:
Sa silid ay maraming pintot durungawan
At ang kawayang lumalagutok
Sa daluyong ng hangin
Huwag mong aminin
Na sa iyong buntunghininga nagpuputok
Ang kanyang pagkatao, subalit
Sa paningin at pandinig
Sa diwat pag-ibig ng isang nilalang
Gumagalaw, kumikilos ang bawat nilikha
Pagkat akoy nag-iisa sa ulilang silid
At naglalamay sa buong daigdig.
Wala akong kaakuhan; akoy iyan

Kung anong buhay
Sumisilay
Sa damdamin ng lupa, hayop, halaman, bubong, tala
Sa kabilugan ng pangmalas nasasaklaw:
Ibubunga ito
Ng tahimik na pagninilay-nilay
Gigising ako
Sa iglap ng kometang naupos sa karimlan:
Isang tanglaw sa bangin ng kaisahan
Ngunit tubos ng batis at sibol ng bawat bagay.
26
MASK OF THE POET

_____________________________________________________
None, no contour to my face
And no name also
To my desire:
In this room youll find a multitude of doors and windows
And the bamboos creaking
To the gusts of the wind
Dont accept
That in your impassioned breathing there explodes
The authentic self in you, but
In ones vision and hearing
In the soul and love of every creature
Moves and dances every organic being
Because I am all alone in this room mourning
And keeping vigil alone in the whole world.
No self, none at all; I exist alone
In every life
Lurking
In the sensibility of the earth, animals, plants, roof, stars
Whatever is circumscribed by the orbit of the senses
What will bear fruit
From quiet reflection
I will wake up
At the sudden burst of a comet that sizzles in the darkness;
A torch illuminating the cliff of solitude
But redeemed by the streams and sprouts of every life on earth.
27
MASKEN DES DICHTERS

_______________________________________________________
Nein, gib meinem Gesicht keine Kontur
und keinen Namen
meinen Wunsch:
In diesem Raum wirst du viele Tren und Fenster finden
und Bambus raschelnd
in den Ben des Winds
Akzeptiere nicht
dass in deinem leidenschaftlichen Atem
dein eigenes Selbst explodiert, aber
in den Visionen und im Gehrten
in der Seele und Liebe jeder Kreatur
tanzt und bewegt sich jedes organisches Wesen
weil ich ganz alleine in diesem Zimmer bin, traurig
und Wache haltend allein in der Welt.
Es gibt kein Selbst; ich existiere nur in jedem Leben Heimlich in den
Sinnesorganen der Erde, Tiere, Pflanzen, Dchern, Sternen
Was auch immer beschrieben ist in der Umlaufbahn der Sinne
Was Frchte tragen wird
durch ruhiges Nachdenken
Ich werde aufwachen
bei der pltzlichen Explosion eines Kometen, der in der
Dunkelheit zischt
Eine Fackel, die die Klippe der Einsamkeit erleuchtet
wieder vershnt durch die Strme und Sprossen
allen irdischen Lebens.
28
29
KALATAS MULA SA ANGHEL NG

ANUNSIYASYON
_________________________________________________________
...huwag nang banggitin pa ang pinakamasahol na drogaang
ating sarili na ating sinususo kapag tayoy nag-iisa.
----Walter Benjamin
( walang anu-anoy nasaling ng kung anong bagwis

anong pakpak napagulantang
nagtakat
namangha
kapagkuway nakuhang tumabi sa matimtimang kaulayaw at

bumulong.)
Mahal, hindi ko malaman kung naibahagi ko na sa iyo ito:

Nais kong malaman mong iniibig kita
Nais kong mabatid mong minamahal kita
Alam mo na ba ito? batid mo na ba ito?
Naulinigan mo ba ang sinabi ko? Nasagap mo ba ang pagtatapat ko?
Naunawaan mo ba ang mensahe ng pagsuyong ito?
Naintindihan mo ba ang kahulugan ng mga salita ko?
Natalos mo ba o di-natulusan ang patalastas na ito?
Wala kang kibo kaya di ko mawari kung nagagap ang isinaad ng
wika
Hindi ko mawatasan kung nagpugad sa dibdib ang naisiwalat
Wala kang imik kaya di ko matanto kung natatap mo ang
naipahiwatig
Aywan ko kung natarok mo ang kahulugan ng mga pangungusap
Aywan ko kung nasakyan mo ang katuturan ng habiling ito
30
Aywan ko kung nagkahulihan tayo at napunan ang pagkukulang

Naramdaman mo bang lumapit at pumasok ang dila ko sa tainga
mo?
Di ko alam ngunit nais kong ipaalam sa iyo bago magpaalam,
Mahal
Sa salamin napansin kong may ngiti kang mahiwagat mataimtim
(pumapagaspas nat handang lumipad pumaimbulog)
Nahigingan kong
Kahit gaano kagaang itong tadhana, anong bigat naman ang
nagpupumiglas
sa iyong sinapupunan
Mahal, magpaunlak ka na upang ang kabiyak
Ay di maghinala sa pagtatalik
na siya lamang makapagliligtas.
31
BOTSCHAFT VOM ENGEL DER

VERKUNDIGUNG
________________________________________________________
um nicht von der schlimmsten Droge zu sprechen, unserem eigenen Selbst,
das wir in der Einsamkeit in uns hineinziehen
-- Walter Benjamin
(. Pltzlich und unerwartet streifte sie ein Flgel mit Federn

berrascht und ehrerbietig richtete sie sich auf
dann gelang es ihm, der treuen Geliebten nher zu kommen und
er wisperte .)
Meine Liebe, ich wei nicht, ob ich schon dieses mitgeteilt habe:
Ich mchte, dass du weit, dass ich dich liebe
Ich wnsche, dass du verstehst, dass ich in dich verliebt bin
Weit du das schon? Hast du das schon verstanden?
Hast du gehrt, was ich sagte? Hast du begriffen, was ich gestand?
Hast du die Botschaft meiner Liebe begriffen?
Hast du die Bedeutung meiner Worte verstanden?
Hast du das gefhlt oder hast du dich dagegen gesperrt?
Du antwortest nicht, ich kann beurteilen, ob du das begriffen hast,
was Sprache bermittelt
Ich kann nicht einschtzen, ob das was ich dir offenbarte, in deinem
Herzen Eingang gefunden hat
32
Du gibst keinen Laut von dir und ich werde mir nicht klar, ob du
das Gesagte verstndlich fandst
Ich wei wirklich nicht, ob du die Bedeutung meiner Stze
verstanden hast
Ich wei wirklich nicht, ob du meine Erinnerung wichtig genommen
hast
Ich wei wirklich nicht, ob wir zusammen gekommen sind und das
Fehlende ergnzten Fhlst du wie meine Zunge nher kommt und in dein Ohr dringt?
Ich wei es nicht, aber ich mchte dich kennen, bevor ich mich
verabschiede, Liebste ..
( Flgel schlagen - sind bereit zum Sprung und Abflug )
Irgendwie denke ich mir ganz gleich wie leicht das Schicksal ist
und wie schwer das Ding in deinem Bauch ist, das da strampelt
. Liebling, gib jetzt die Zustimmung,
so dass dein Ehemann
nicht vermuten muss, dass dieser Verkehr das Einzige ist,
was vershnt .
33
PIET
_____________________________________________________________
Scarcely do the hands and arms convey

the push and pull of Adams gravity.
You, mothering flesh, gather in repose

the turmoil of his ripe acceptance
expressed in those serpentine folds

that in their vigilant dissonance
harmonize his fagged-out body

with the reaping curve of your arms
Now the weight of that cadaver

counterpoints those rising cherubims
that you, who bore us, have conceived likewise

in the womb that reconciles.
34
SKINDIVER IN AN ODD ANGLE STANCE

_________________________________________________________
The distinguished Lady spoke of Culture

Before polished bathroom tiles;
Sounding cracked chords within,
She craves for a renaissance.
But Primaveras picture hides the void
Behind thick scrupulous folds;
Seaweeds stranded on the carpet
Install dreams labyrinth
There floats the terrible and wise
Barracuda of the soul
Among guests slick, well-preserved,
Who hopes to wive this widowed heiress?
I pose to dive between her thighs
And penetrate the abyss there
The distinguished Lady spoke of Love,
Shaved armpits exuding.
In a deep alcove she displayed
Vellum, calf, morocco; but proudly
A tome bound in human skin
Hair still stiff, sharp, raw.
35
BIYERNES NG HAPON, OKTUBRE 1, 2005, SA

WILLIMANTIC, CONNECTICUT
_________________________________________________________
Sa hapong tag-lagas may sugat na umaantak

Sa lamat ng mga kalsadang aspalto sa lungsod na dating
pastulan ng mga katutubong Indyang Pequot.
Anong kabulaanan ang itinatago ng mga kortina sa durungawan?
Hindi alam ng mga kalapati kung ano ang kulay ng pag-asa.
Naupos na sigarilyoy ibinurol ko sa tabi ng Tulay ng mga Palaka

Habang patungo ang prusisyon ng trapik sa Foxboro Casino
na pag-aari ng Indyang Pequot.
Kung bakit sumingit sa isip ang Abu Sayyaf?
Sa takipsilim ng tag-lagas sinisilip sa gunita ang kutob at kilabot
bago tayo naglakbay patungong Amerika.
36
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 1, 2005, IN

WILLIMANTIC, CONNECTICUT, USA
_______________________________________________________
In the autumn afternoon a wound festers in the crack of the asphalt

roads in the city once a pasture field for the native Pequot Indians.
What fraud and deceptions do the window-curtains hide?
Doves and pigeons do not know the color of hope.
My cigarette stubb I interred beside the Bridge of Frogs while the
traffic procession headed for the Foxboro Casino now owned by the
Pequots.
But why does the Abu Sayyaf sneak into the mind?
In the Falls twilight hour I sneak into memory s fissure,
a voyeur filled with apprehension and terror
before we journeyed to America.
37
SALAMISIM: SA GITNA NG PAGLALAKBAY....

_________________________________________________________
Ilang milyang distansiya ang niyebe sa tuktok ng Dolomiti

mula rito sa Piazza Dante Alighieri
datapwat
ang balat ng leeg moy mainit sa hipo ko
Anong destinasyon kaya ang mahuhulaan
sa bituka ng mga kalapating umiikot
sa naghahamong
palad ng makata?
Babaylan ng tag-lamig, Giovanna, pinagdugtong mo ang
konsepto at talinghaga
ngunit
saan kayang bilog ng impiyerno ako isasadlak
ng nagsalupang anghel?
Apoy sa utak (bagwis ng metamorposis)
sa pagitan ng pag-ahon
at paglusong, walang gabay na pantas sa
paglalagalag
kung hindi si
Antonio Gramsci
(nakaluklok sa yelong purgatoryo ng
bilangguan)
38
tanging patnubay sa laberinto ng komunistang hardin

subalit sa agwat mula sa niyebeng nakatiwangwang at nagliliyab na
karsel
palayain mo, Giovanna, aking mutya!-sa puwang na iyon
hinagkan kita, niyapos, kinulong sa aking bisig
habang naglalagablab ang rebolusyon sa Sierra Madre
at sa buong
(rumaragasang dingas ng paraiso sa iyong dibdib
at buhok)-umalon, humupa
hanggang sa magkatupok-tupok
ang kapital ng budhit tubo ng bait
sa iyong mga halik
39
REVERIES: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE

JOURNEY.
_______________________________________________________
A million miles away
the snow perched on the Dolomiti peaks
from where I stand here

at the Piazza Dante Alighieri
but
the skin of your neck is warm to my touch
What destination may perhaps be divined
in the entrails of the doves flying around
the challenging hand of the poet?
Sorceress of winter, Giovanna, you dovetailed
the concept and metaphor
but
to which circle of inferno will I be hurled
by the earth-borne angel?
Fire in the brain (wings of metamorphosis)
between the descent and the upsurge,
no sage guiding me in this wandering
except
Antonio Gramsci
(nestled in the icy purgatory of his prison cell)
my only mentor in the labyrinth of the garden of communism
40
but
in the distance between the snow naked in the open air
and the burning dungeon
liberate us, Giovanna, my beloved
in that fissure
I grasped you, embraced you, bound you in my arms
while the revolution explodes in a conflagration
in the mountains of Sierra Madre
raging throughout the islands
(raging fire of paradise in your breast and
hair) rising in waves, falling
until the capital of conscience and the profit
of virtue
are gutted
by your kisses
(Translated from the original Filipino text)
41
THE SWEETHEART OF LUDWIG VON

WITTGENSTEIN
_________________________________________________________
You proved the navel equidistant between the igloos

and Galagapos Islands.
Having weaned yourself from the guts of an octopus you knew what
the oyster hides in her antediluvian pit
But, pithecanthropus erectus,
you fell in love with your Greek midwife under the eucalyptus
tree.
Orchids, scalloped and pendulous,

swung into Brunhildes quagmire
in the archaic night
when the sulphur-black dinosaur rose from the caves of lava
and argued against
the equations of your love.
42
TO BELLA
________________________________________________________
(Who has abandoned the streets for a steady job
as mistress of a business tycoon)
Bella, let the last bus, the last train pass

Tunnels, gouged eyes of a Beelzebub, shall bleed love
of horsepower carats in a thousand goodbyes
at Hiroshima station
This avalanche of wheels, handshakes, circumnavigations
chokes!
Or tickles Etruscan humours?
I knew your ambiguous oval
face somewhere in the halo of Bikini
Atoll
The moons suspended arc hovered static,weightless, white
after the catastrophe
But our tonguesparalyzed knivesfroze in acetylene kiss!
At night we watched trajectories of jet-propelled fireflies in dazzling
eclipse
at dawn, gorillas scratched the pillars and sleepy facades
of New York, Paris, Moscow, Rome.
Pose for the Annunciation, Bella.
Use up your lust,
your fiberglass cunning amid brass candelabras
Spectrums and crucibles dissolve in your eyes
and a snapshot kiss telescopes all terminals, velocities,
destinations
From this lump of coal your absence rises
43
an ice-blue phoenixstraight from

DH Lawrences spleen.
Love?
Nay, only hemorrhoids of pathos.
Dont calculate the end of railways. Each station burns

the mirrors for exiles.
I dream of soldering your heart to this uranium compass
(later unearthed in the ruins of
the Manila cathedral)
charting the meridians,
zones,
latitudes of your souls smithereens!
Let the last bus, the last train pass
This engine of our sex, croup of a black mare enraged,
will speed apotheosis to the
Himalayas
But my winged sperms will hover forever in your wax boudoir
while I chew bitter lemon rinds
for Clio.
44
NAGSANGANG BATIS SA PUGAD NG IYONG

PILIK-MATA
__________________________________________________________
Nakintal sa latak ng pagbubulay-bulay ang parabulang makirit
malikot
Sa iyong pisngi naglambitin sa agiw ang sungay ng guniguning
mailap
Sa iyong tainga nakaluklok ang patibong ng indayog ng mga
manlalakbay
Anong kahulugang nanlilimahid ang nag-umang ng kamanyang sa
lakambini
Sa ilong mo napigtal ang halimuyak ng gayumang nagpatingkad sa
buwan
Nagulumihanan ang bugaw na tikwas-ngusong nagmamatyag sa
salamin
Nalunod sa gunitay hulihin sa bibig sa halik himaymayin ang mga
kalansay
Salamangka ng hiraya sa noo moy namulaklak ng bagwis at
pumailanlang
Walang lunas sa kuko ng pangangailangan sa ngipin ng ibong
mandaragit
Namukadkad sa Pinatubo walang saklolo kundi sa pilantik ng iyong
dila
Basbas ng hamog sa iyong kilay susungaw ang payaso ng birot
tuksuhan
Iaalay ang malik-matang pag-irog sa umagang yapos ng gerilyang
talusaling
45
THE FORKED FOUNTAIN IN THE NEST OF

YOUR EYELASH
__________________________________________________________
Inscribed in the silt of brain-work this parable thats lascivious
and flirtatious
On your cheeks swinging from cobwebs the horns
of imagination leaping wild
In your ears nestle the bait of the travellers rhythm
What meaning thats all soaked in filth mounts the trap of
incense for the muse
From your nose the fragrance of a love-charm plucked
that intensifies the moons brilliance
The pimps dumbfounded his nose lifted snottily
observing in the mirror
Drowned in memory catch in the mouth from a kiss
disentangling the skeleton fiber by fiber
Sleight-of-hand magic of figures on your forehead
flower into wings that soar
No cure for the claws of necessity at the teeth of
vultures swooping
On Mount Pinatubo no succor sprout but from
the lashing of your tongue
Dews baptism from your eyebrow the clown of jokes and
temptation will peer out
Offering illusions of love in the morning embraced
by the guerilla astutely spying
46
ARKITEKTONIKO
_______________________________________________________
Pagbubulay-bulay:
Bumukal ako, alay koy
bulaklak ng kamalayan
Alaala ng
bulalakaw na alalay
ng naglahong
alapaap
bula o bulak?
Ikaw na liwanag at mailap na bango,
Ikaw na kabulaanan?
O buhay
Ay!
47
48
VICISSITUDES OF THE LOVE AND DEATH OF

VALDIMIR MAYAKOVSKY
_________________________________________________________
From the prehistoric furnace of Neanderthal zoos

you, Vladimir, rose from the guns snout
Deaths aqueduct pumped quicksilver into your head weighing
1,700 grams
in the pantheon of the State Institute
for the Study of the Brain where they
hoped
to revolutionize the psyche
by the non-stop whistling bullet of
Dialectical Materialism
Your torso rocketed beyond the Eiffel Tower
Now your lobster-red tongue spits Pentecostal vodka agitprops
and burns all the ace of spades
in Paris London
Tokyo
Calvary
New York
Gas-masked Rothschilds who exiled burlesque queens to Tibet

dismantled your tough aqualung, your cranium
archive
humming like an Early Bird satellite
But neon x-rays from your submarine catacombs
kicked them in the loins
Your flywheels, your robot chassis
crushed the bedbug millionaires of your era with the savage
hurricane of words
49
Your WORDS sizzling with dynamite fuse

blasted Broadway skyscrapers to nuclear
stratospheres!
Words shockcircuiting the wires so that intercoms
radars
telegraphs
could deliver only

the news of your resurrection
from the fiery canyons of the Indies

You unsynchronized the clocks
and deified the Spirit of Changes
who ambushed a whore with a golden
wig
while B-52 pterodactyls zoom in from Vietnam horizons
ZOOM---ZOOOOM-ZOOOOOOOM--to unload their leprous century eggs
on Victor Charlies washlines
You
muse of the belly-dancers marathon performance buried in

todays headlines
On the dockyards of San Francisco
Boston
New Orleans
etcetera
etcetera
the tractors bear the bodies of purgatory bloodhounds
from the Kremlin
Peking White House for

the Easter Circus in Rome
Stockbrokers hoarded broken chips
Kama Sutra Zen LSD
for profit
tomorrow they will board a Gemini spaceship
to distribute smallpox throughout the galaxies!
Nude beatnik women pin on Lollobrigida breasts
Playboy tails and stabile maidenheads
50
as they swarm the Basilica: sexy amazons of the Bikini miracle

bursting Wall Street.
The stripteaser in Hiroshima peels off her aluminum girdle
with the hairy forceps of your drooling eyes
You who rode the Roaring Twenties with
your jet-powered backbone flute
spat wraths grapes on Moscow bosses
What a period of waiting at the end of a moonstruck leash
while in Singapore the hunchbacked philistine with fly
unbuttoned
committed suicidewhat a scandal!
Sirens and high-heeled Valkyries emerged from proletarian
motels and howled orgies
of Messianic doom in Manhattan
while
Reverend Malthus entered a massage clinic in Chinatown
and exited a Buddha in grey-flanneled suit
he castrated all hostesses, Saturns denizens,
to adjust the geometrical ratio of
copulation versus subsistence.
Cocktails in London produced visions of a sequoia
amid a Sahara
of bulldozers
tractors
shooting galleries totempoles
flashing
SOS
SOS
SOS
SOS
SOS
SOS
SOS
SOS
When would ambrosia and ichor ooze from the pores of prostitutes?
The sexjokes of the world exuded ammonia in Hilton hotels
Charred porkchops met sagging chins of Spanish debutantes
mixing chamberpots of Bloody Mary
Ennui
ennui
51
hissing from a black frying pan

chokes the autumnal cocoon of chandeliers until the
Aurora Borealis of your gunshot
switches the moons brakes
and explodes our
glorious civilization 1967 A.D.
hurtling toward the sewers
of the crystal Andes!
And then, midnight, bat semaphores burned behind manned
barricades
comets collided in lavatories
The Madonna clutched a telegram
and you read cuneiforms
sinewy
hieroglyphs
cut by your shoulderblade razor:
ICARUS GROUNDED BUT NATURE ABHORS
THE WOMBS VACUUM
And the gang of procurators in the Cold War tumbled
from the pneumatic Rolls Royce of dreams
and ordered the arsenals mobilized
because Vladimir
the enfant terrible

will guzzle down the Bomb
in his python gullet

For exploiters love Narcissus and all bureaucrats would rather
swallow napalms than switch on
the geraniums of Negro blues
before the morgues where
whores converged in the crisis
But too late
too late-the rebellions on!
Scimitars nail down the cosmonauts platform for

52
the eclipsed clown

Gorki maneuvers unicorn derricks with his fists
to excavate your tomb from underground urinals
your cast-iron stomach augured an Alaskan solstice
Rockdrills
Olympic blowtorches
alembic hooks
will pry open the airport of your death

to release the charged embassies of love
into ozone:
the incarnate parakeet of your sex
Uranium fission from your mouth tattoos with seatchlights
the smile of the sphinx
How many Saviors agents
Pharisees with trademarks of a thousand zeros
fouled up the traffic in Shanghai
and zoomed to Mars
Sulphurous flames prophesied by Heine
roared from kissing warheads from bellies pleading
OK
OK
OK
The death of Karma has disarmed the United Nations

But your body could nowhere be found!
Keynes and his dunces have spirited it away in sealed freezers
in balloons and flying saucers
a sacrifice to the legend of nebulaes
Your arrival puzzled Columbus
He never knew the dialectic of the crab
He never knew this athlete of idylls
troubador Vladimir
prophet by TKO
whose ghost will parachute from the stratosphere
53
his heart impaled on a phallus

All the spires of Chartres would pierce the lugubrious Sphinx
only to know where you are now
But the newspapers quarantined the day of your coming
the annunciation of love
the apocalypse of the Word
Only the bongo drumsrockn it rockn it and rolling
displayed the omens
and made sense of the rot
these happenings
while your darlings--- Maria
Tatiana
(You pushed their marrow with butchers nails)

exorcised their navels at Brooklyn Bridge
pouring daiquiri on their erotic scalp
as token of your interrogations
in their volcanic beehives
In Manila bars the pimps and matrons groped for entelechy
in the gizzards of a castrated boar
after cursillos and novenas
pendulums
with moth-eaten
swinging above
But your spies knocked on every hollow rib
sounding the scarecrow wires
and the rhizome of this wobbling edifice
And then while the miracle workers of Hollywood wept
butterflies with cybernetic wings sprang
toward Antartica
You dropped quietly your Valentine greetings
from the nude Majas umbilical cord
with the burnt cork of your spite
You sneaked down the iron firescape
austere
54
le poete maudit
Lily
ready to grind the meat of your females

in the vise of your coalburnt thighs
The Control scratched the Sistine plaster with
SOS OK
SOS
OK
The Ziegfield Follies blushed and ripped leeches

from their loins
and ordered Molotov cocktails
to celebrate your
coming
The rainbows percentage boomed in Chicagos pit
Panic!
Comrade bureaucrats began to smuggle the Arabian Nights through
airport eunuchs
and syphilitic Magi in the International Fair
signed X on a Big Top ferris wheel
while Brahmas bulldozer in Pier 7
awaiting Customs clearance
dreamed of Torquemadas concubine
torpedoed
orbiting around the thighs of Genghis Khan
and Brancusi
swaddled in tinfoil
crucified with vestal mosaic
Platos Ideal Forms on a curved space

until the Absolute puked at African voodoos carved by Riemann.
Panic!
The power-saw
exhibiting its pushbutton sex to bankers
and financiers from the East
witnessed how
the ghost of Marilyn Monroe suffered remorse until
she was canonized
on pyramids of Intercontinental ballistic missiles
55
Your eyes
Vladimir
are embalmed gas jets

tied to the radiator of your solar plexus
roasting the bourgeoisie and making them vomit

disjecta membra from their system
Smash the wheels of your wrist-watch into splinters!
Mantle the sundial with the placenta of the Euphrates!
From mosques spires temples cupolas from time
capsules for sale in supermarkets
from test tubes septic tanks
saints with hydraulic portfolios came to pump the flood
out of the
Quiapo underpass
where the black Nazarene submerged himself
during the 1966 Summit Conference
But the camera fails to register these happenings
Dice of electrons run amok in your brains reservoir
Vladimir
and uproot oases until the panting deer
Christ-Selfs surrogate
is devoured by gnomes and ourang-outangs
from the extreme unction of your epic verses
Blasting the aquariums of this world
your iron voice
Vladimir
will release the turbulent Atlantic
with this deluge
and give our love
the winged Leviathan of your death!
[Cambridge, Mass., USA 1965--Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, 1967]
56
QUERIDA MIA
Itoy bagong awit sa lumang gitara.

Sa bawat pilantik humahalimuyak;
Pumaimbulog ang tinig: sinaklaw
Ang bundok, simoy at dalampasigan.
Walang kawalan ang kalikasan
Masusukat mo ba ang bisig ng guniguni?
Subukan sa luho ng dapong binigkis,
Mababakas mo ang kakulangan.
Apoy sa daliri: sumimsim, sumidhi

Sa indak ng bituing masalimuot;
Bulaklak ng lumbay sa himapapawid,
Along sumalok sa halik dumaloy.
Humalakhak ang loro sa dilim
Pumusyaw ang labing tumikom sa isip:
Damdamiy bumuko, sumiklab ang bunga
Itoy lumang awit sa bagong gitara.
57
58
MEGAMALL SA METRO MANILA

__________________________________________________
Buhay alamang, isang kahig at tatlong tuka.

Pinuputakti ang balintataw mo ng sanlaksang bilihing istetsayd
kahit di mo batid ang signipikasyon ng commodity fetishism.
Pakiramay na sa walang pera.
Maunlad na raw ang bayan. Utang natin ito sa mga bagong
bayanimga domestik (Overseas Contract Workers) sa Hong Kong,
Singapore, Saudi at diyan sa Subic, Alabang, at tabi-tabi.
Wala nang barikada bagamat patuloy ang pagngangasab ng mga
buwaya sa katihan.
Abot din ng baho ng Ilog Pasig ang mga boudoir sa Malakanyang.
Utang na loob at hiya ang susi daw sa karakter ng Pinoy.
Pinanonood sa sine ang kagilagilalas na karambulan nina
Schwarzenegger, James Bond, Bruce Lee at Sigourney Weaver.
Baka mahamugan ang bumbunan mo ng tadhanang iginuhit.
Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, FREE TRADE ZONES at credit cards ang
kailangan.
Lagot na.... Salimbugaw ---pagluksoy patay.
59
Upang masubukan kung tubog sa ginto, maghuramentado ka sa

Jollibee.
Saanmang gubat may ahas, aprubado ng World Bank at
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Sa madlang humuhugos sa iskaleytor, atungal-baka at hingalkabayo ang nakikisalamuha sa antena ng iyong budhi.
Itsura mo, mukhang hampas-lupa.
Sapagkat tumaas daw ang GNP, di na kailangang ang NPA.
dumarami ang biktima ng pagsosona ng militar
Sa Muntinlupa nabubulok ang mga bilanggong pulitikal.
Sagad-butong utang sa labas, paano ang utang-na-loob?
Ngunit hanggang ngayon wala pang dilihensiya, pare ko. Palpak
ang istratehiya.
Nakamotorsiklo na ang pangarap.
Ingat pa ba rin? Sa kalingkingan lamang ang sakit pero....
[Walang hiyat dinamay pa ako.]
Kung apaw na sa takalan, kailangang kalusin.
60
MEGAMALL IN METRO MANILA

_______________________________________________________
A shrimps life, one scratch and three pecks....
Your vision is shrouded by Stateside goods galore even though you
dont know the signification of commodity fetishism.
Condolence to the down and out.
The countrys progressing, they say. We owe this to the new

heroes, the domestics (Overseas Contract Workers) in Hong
Kong,Singapore, Saudi, and in Subic, Alabang, and elsewhere.
No more barricades even though crocodiles continue to scavenge the
shores.
The odor of Pasig River snakes its way up to the boudoir of
Malacanan Palace.
Utang na loob [inner debt] and hiya [shame] are alleged to be
the two keys to the character of the Filipino.
We watch on the movie screen the fantastic rumbles of
Schwarzenegger, James Bond, Bruce Lee and Sigourney Weaver.
Your thick skull might be contaminated by the fate thats written on
the wall.
For the nation to develop, FREE TRADE ZONES and credit cards are
needed.
Kaput...
Tailing behind, you leap and die.
In order to test the purity of gold, commit juramentado running amok

in Jollibee.
61
Wherever the wilderness, snakes abound, approved by the World

Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
In the crowds flowing down the escalator, cow-grunts and horsesighs
encounter the antennae of your conscience.
Look at yourself, like a shitty rogue.

Because the GNP rose, we dont need the New Peoples Army. The
victims of military zoning are piling up, while in Muntinlupa rot
hundreds of political prisoners.
Debts outside up to the hilt, what about debts within?
Up to now, no deal, brother. Your strategys a dud.
Your dreams are now on motorcycles.
Still take care? The pain is in between the toes, but....
Shit, you even named me as an accomplice.
When the pile is way up, its time to level it with the strickle.
62
THE TARANTULA
_______________________________________________________
The tarantula, belly and limbs undulating,

Clutches the unhealed flesh of grief;
Crystal auguries flash from spasms of its eyes
Cavernous, primeval, that span the emptiness.
Milennial spines unleash the venom of its blood
Flung from the cobwebs knotted agony;
Acetylene claws grip the flys umbilical cord
Hairy spit of death, spiked apocalypse.
What mercy throbs there in the green underside?
What bite shall penetrate to ecstasy?
What fire unravels from its sinewy womb?
The tarantula spins in the brains cruel slime.
Anguish, anguish breathes black sweat
The torso bristles, pincers poised to pierce.
Wounds sink deeper to dispossess the heart
Until hallucinations flex, the dance begins.
Ta-ran! Ta-ran! The navels root untwists,
From its solitude the tarantulahoo-la! Hoo-la!
Treads the wires lusty phosphorescence
Unless the dance its measured death redeems.
63
64
PUNTA SPARTIVENTO
_____________________________________________________________
Walang pag-aalsang nasasayang. Bawat isay
hakbang sa wastong direksyon.
Salud Algabre
Kamusmusay pinaglahuan, Mahal ko,

Nahubdang kariktan ng lawa bundok ulap ang pinagpalang
dulot sa atin ng kalikasan
Sa kabilang ibayo nagliliyab ang mga bulaklak sagisag ng biyayang
ipinangako.
Ngunit anong bagwis ng lumipas ang sumisingit
lumalambong sa gandat aliwalas ng ating pagtatagpo?
bumibiyak sa pinagbuklod na pagnanais,
humahati sa pinagtipan?
Nagugunita ang mga pinagmalupitang ininis sa hukay ng dusat
pighati.
Alaala ng kinabukasan
anong balitang bulalas ng dumaragsang hangin?
Pinatay sina Juvy Magsino, Benjaline Hernandez, Eden Marcellana,
Rafael Bangit, Alyce Claver.
Sa dalampasigan ng Punta Spartivento, nagtatagpot naghihiwalay
ang alon
sa kaliwa o sa kanan, hayun at nariyantila baga
walang pagpapasiya,
itinutulak sa kaliwa o kinakabig sa kanan
pinaghahati ng tadhana o kapalaran?
itinutulak ng pagkamuhi, kinakabig ng pagmimithi?
Anong layag ang pumalaot sa kabilang pampang urong
pataas
sulong
pababa?
Kukong dayukdok ng mandaragit ang humahagupit ngayon

65
Halos di madalumat ng manlalakbay ang krimeng naganap at

nagaganap
755 pinatay, 181 dinukot at pinagsamantalahan
Nasayang ba, Salud? Buhay may abuting magkalagot-lagut
ilan pang hakbang?
Dumurugtong ang inabot ng mga hinagupit ng walangkatarungang orden,
Iniuugnay ng mga pinaglahot nilunod ng kabuktutan.
Agaw-dilim sa Punta Spartivento.
humahatit bumibiyak sa agos ng karanasan.
Nakaigpaw sa kukot pangil ng daungang humahatit
naghihiwalay
Mahal ko, sa iyong labi namilaylay ang bukang-liwayway ng
biyayang ipinangako,
inilagak sa hiwa ng dalamhatit luwalhati,
ng kailangan at di-kailangan, ng walang halaga at may halaga
habang magkayapos, tiim ang bagang,
sumasagupa sa buhawi ng dalampasigan.
Pinagpala ang ilanlibong mamamayang biktima ng mga oligarkot
komprador
sa biyak ng kahapong lumubog
at ng kinabukasang pumapaimbulog
Pinagpala ang mga kasamang naghiwalay at humati,
nagbukod at bumiyak
Makikilala din ang umiwas at ang dumulog, ang nakihamok at ang
tumiwalag
Magtatagpo ang lahat sa Punta Spartivento ng himagsikan.
[Bellagio, Italya, Setyembre 2006]
66
PUNTA SPARTIVENTO
________________________________________________________
Innocence has flickered out, my Beloved,
The disrobed glory of the lake
mountains clouds is the gift
offered by nature
From the distant shore burn the flowers symbolizing the promised
blessings.
But what wings of the past sneak in
shrouding the beauty and sanctity of our meeting?
splitting the unity of desire, dividing our tryst?
Remembering the violated victims plunged in the grave of
suffering and despair.
Souvenirs of the future
what tidings are trumpeted by the turbulent winds?
They killed Juvy Magsino, Benjaline Hernandez, Eden Marcellana,
Rafael Bangit, Alyce Claver.
On the shores of Punta Spartivento, the waves encounter each other
and separate
right or left, here and thereas if without any
decision, pushed to the right
or pulled to the left
divided by fate or fortune?
driven by hatred, attracted by hope?
What sails have traveled to the other shoremoving to and fro, up
and down, hither and thither?
Famished claws of vultures are striking down
Scarcely does the wanderer sense the crimes that have
occurred and are now occurring
755 murdered, 181 abducted and abused
Was it all a waste, Salud Algabre?
67
Even if life is extinguished

how many more leaps?
Those tortured by this unjust order link us together,
they connect and are joined by what has
disappeared,
drowned by barbarism.
Dusk falls on Punta Spartivento.

dividing and splitting the flow of experience..
In my solitude, all the combatants who have perished are inscribed
in the psyche transcending the claws and fangs
of this port that divide and fragment
My beloved, in your lips treads the dawn of the promised beatitude,
grafted into the cut of grief and rapture,
of what is needed and not needed,
of what is valueless and what is valued,
while we embrace, our jaws clenched,
attacking the shores whirlwind.
Blessed are the thousands of victims of the oligarchy and
compradors
in the fissure of the past now sunk and tomorrow
heaving up, surging
Blessed are the comrades who separated and divided,
selected and cut up
The world will know who deserted and who volunteered,
those who fought and those who fled
Everyone will meet here at the Punta Spartivento of the revolution.
68
THE SEDUCTION
_________________________________________________
The anvil glows in the windless dawn.

The lover descends to the garden and the hidden well
And there she waits, quenchless, for his bright sharp
limbs.
Her dusk has dreamed of this piercing light....
Last night he sang and played, igniting the coals;
All night she danced around the fire, beyond totem and
taboo....
That night, barefoot, in arabesques and masquerades
They kissed and fled the garden and the well.
The anvil glows in the windless dawn.
But what eyes, what teeth discover the well?
Knives nude beneath blossoms flash in the dark;
On shards of broken jugs sprinkled sweat and blood....
Dew ascends, dew rusts the strings of the guitar....
Beyond the gates of horn, husks of seeds glow quenchless
In the garden, around the well; beyond the ivory gates
The breathless fire of arabesques beats
And beats on the anvil of the morning star.
69
LA SEDUCCION
_______________________________________________________
El yunque brilla intensamente en el alba sin viento.
El amante desciende al jardn y el pozo ocultado
Y all ella espera, inapagable, para miembros agudos brillantes.
Su crepsculo ha soado de esta luz penetrante.
Ayer por la noche l cant y jug, encendiendo los carbones;
Toda la noche ella bail alrededor del fuego, ms all
del totem y del tab.
Esa noche, descalza, en arabescos y mascaradas
Ellos besaron y huyeron el jardn y el pozo ...
El yunque resplandece en el alba sin viento.
Pero qu ojos, qu dientes descubren el pozo?
Los cuchillos desnudos debajo de las flores destellan
en la oscuridad;
En fragmentos de jarras rotas el sudor y la sangre rociados
El roco asciende, roco aherrumbra las cuerdas de la guitarra.
Ms all de las puertas del cuerno, las cscaras de
semillas resplandecen inapagable
En el jardn, alrededor del pozo; ms all de
las puertas del marfil
El fuego jadeante de arabescos golpea en el yunque
del lucero del alba.
70
ROMANCE OF THE BOURGEOIS POET

_______________________________________________________
Beyond thickets of barbed wire in the capitalist Eden
You dream of the steel-blue dawns of Siberian spring
While murderers sport silk gloves before cash registers
There, the horizon is a guillotines edge
The suns a hyperbolical inkblot on your bank account
Blood sweats from the aerial whips of TV transmitters
Spires gleam
austere, weatherbeaten, in Antartica
You spit on sloughed-off cinders of your soul.
Begin from tabula rasa? Yes, for thats how Michelangelo began:
He crashed through the coffined ceiling and fell to the sky
You will then immortalize the anesthesized conscience of this age
With your terrestrial dreams
Like an aviator from Venus
You will look back on the beacons of apocalypse
From the airport control tower,
with Zenos or Heraclitus smile,
Your radar fixed on the moons stocks soaring in the Exchange.
71
SIYAM
NA AWIT
NG
PAGMAMAHAL
& ISANG INTERBENSIYONG

DALIT NG PANIBUGHO
______________________________________________________
1
Kabaliwang sugal ng istambay basagulerong lasing lito alangan
Bulakbol na kontra-bidang napasubo sa ilalim ng balag ng alanganin
Anumang tangka sa paghabi ng tula ay pakikipagsapalaran
Ipukol ang dais walang katiyakan magkrus sa tumilampong bola
Walang makahuhula kung saan ka maitutulak o maihuhulog nitong
sayaw
Kapag nabighani sa paralumang hindi ubas kundi tinik ang hain
Walang gantimpala o ginhawang mapapala sa panganib ng paglikha
Di sinasadyang daplis ng dila todas ka di na mababawi ang
nabitiwang salita
Sa pagbabakasakaling masilo maikintal sa titik ang mailap na
dalumat
Sa talisman ng iyong pilik-mata nanduduro ang maharot na
paghimok
Bawat kilos ng bibig ay masidhing udyok bilanggong
nagpupumiglas
Nasupalpal bawat pakana patibong atras-sulong ng diwang
malibog
Pusta moy waldas abuloy na lang sa Abu Sayyaf Suriin bago
tumaya
Subalit ang pagsunod sa nasay di naghahangad ng tuwa o sarap
Lubog sa luhat pawis ng guni-guning naduhagi sa gayuma ng wika
72
2
Oo Mahal ang problemay nasaan ang nasang mapusok
mapangamkam
Pumili sa pagsamba sa mutya o komitment sa panata ng pulang
mandirigma
Sino ang masusunod aling adhika ang makatutugon sa pithaya ng
dibdib
Walang susog o gabay mula kina Rosa Luxemburg at Alexandra
Kollontai
Kahit sikolohiyang Pilipino ay dahop sa kalinangan ng libog at
ligaw
Nangangapa pa sa gabi ng pag-aalinlangan kung anong pakay ng
budhi
Anong layuning sumasakay sa katawan ng hayup na marunong
mangarap
Hayup na lutang sa panaginip ng paraisong sagana sa pagkain at
halakhak
Hampas-lupang nilalang ng May-kapal upang subukin at parusahan
Hindi ka ba naman hihiyaw ng Hindi Huwag Hindi Ayokong
magtiis
Gusto mo man o hindi dapat magpasiya kundi walang katuturan
ang panitik
Nais mo bang malambing ang indayog ng taludtod nakakakiliti sa
ari
Bakit dapat ipaghiwalay ang dalawang lunggating sadyang
magkaugnay
Tulad ng magkabiyak na karanasan ng pagtatalik at paglagot ng
hininga
Magunaw man ang mundo napukaw sa pantasiya ng pag-iisa ng
dalawa
73
3
Iisa lamang ang tunguhan taluntunin ang daang baku-bako zigzag
Baybayin ang pariralang baluktot burarang saknong at taludtod
Binigkas na pangakoy tutuparin bagamat naligaw sa gubat ng
kaakuhan
Kung saan nag-aabang ang malupit na kaulayaw O mutya ng
kabalintunaan
Wala sa pagbubulay-bulay masisinop ang taktikat istratehiya ng
rebolusyon
Wala sa paghimay-himay ng tayutay ang susi sa suliranin ng
praktika
Ipukol muli ang dais baka paratangan mo akong mambobola
lamang
Bantaan na huwag isuko ang pagnanasang maabot ang kalis ng
tagumpay
Huwag lumuhod sa kuhilang asal langot babad sa imperyalistang
putahan
Huwag tumiwalag sa pagsisikap matamo ang himala ng iyong pagaalay
Nais mo mang tumahimik at magpasasa sa luho ng petiburgesyang
buhay
Di ka pahihintulutan ng kalaguyong nagtatanggol lumalaban
Mariing sampal ang babati sakaling tumalikod sa hamong
sunggaban
Ang pagkakataong mahulit makulong sa bisig ang pinakaasamasam
Sakim sa halik ganid gahamang Eros mapag-imbot sa sigasig ng
paglipad
74
4
Bakit sa muling pagkikita natin Mahal umiilag ka Kurot moy
mailap
Hayun lumuluksong bagwis sa himapapawid naglundagang
palikpik sa agos
Namamaalam na ang pilantik ng mata wala pa rin akong
kaalam-alam
Kulang sa pagmaniobra ng diyalektika sanay sa pagbibilang ng
bituin
Nahan ka Huseng Batute Babala sa makata ng pinipintuhong
lakambini
Saklolohan ninyo ang napariwara sa sugal ng pagbabagu-bago ng
titik-tugma
Sa panahon ng krisis kung saan manhid ang konsiyensiya di
tinatablan
Anumang sandata ng kritikay balewala walang nais kumawala sa
piitan
Nasanay sa pagkaalipin urong ang bayag hubad-dangal Sinong
sisisihin
Paano imumulat ang tao sa kabuktutan kung binusabos ang sariling
bait
Parang natural na ang paglapastangan kung sangkot ka sa
sistemang kriminal
Anong bisa ng talinghagang matamis kung walang paggalang sa
sarili
Hindi sapat ang sining kung ang biktimay malubhat naghihingalo
Sa lambong ng propaganda tinitiis ang pagdurusa at ginahasang
karangalan
Kailangan ang pulburat baril habang umaawit ng kundiman sa
dilim
75
5
Pagtawid sa Plaza Miranda nakatagpo muli kita Suwerteng awa o
patawad
Tingin moy pagbati sa banyaga ngiti moy hasik na hamog sa
disyerto
Saplot ng pag-aagam-agam binulabog mo ang hinalat hinanakit
Anghel sa dilim ang bintang sa iyo ngunit sugo ng kaligtasan sa akin
Sa titig moy sumusupling ang biyaya ng maluwalhating
kinabukasan
Nabuksan ang lihim ng pangakong bininyagan mo ng katuparan
Di mapapatawad ang sakripisyong isinugal ang puri at dangal ng
bayan
Napansin kong nangilabot ka sa panganib ng darating na sagupaan
Sa haplos at hikayat pumayag kang makilahok Saliksikin Siyasatin
Batid ko sa kabila ng pahintulot nagkubli ang hinagpis siphayo
kutob
Isang hipo ng iyong daliri sumiklab muli ang titis ng pagnanais
Umigkas ang damdaming nasagkaan nakiramay kapit-bisig
Paalis ka na sinulyapan kita damdam koy nagbubulag-bulagan
Batid kong may hilig ka rin nag-uusig umiiwas sa gumigiring
hayop
Walang imik kapag nasukol sisiklab ang panibughong anong
bagsik
6
Ang saklap na matuklasang umalis ka na walang iniwang
direksiyon
Habang ang nanliligaw ay naghahanap pa ng salita uutal-utal
Di inakalang iwanan mo ang iyong historyador O mandarayang
Sinta
76
Sumbat moy sinungaling ako mambobolang pinatulan ng Ars

Poetika
Hangal ang makatang nanunungkit ng bituin bumubulong sa
hangin
Nagumon sa estetikang binayaran ng burgesyang hibang sa ari-arian
Oo Mahal marami ngang naglulubid ng buhangin sa krisis ng
bayang sawi
Hindi ako luluhod sa dambana ng musa ng luhot
mapagsamantalang uri
Kahit man wala kang tiwala sa aking pangakong maglingkod sa iyo
Gagaod sa patnubay ng seksing birheng nagkasala laos na Bomba
Queen
Dinggin mo ang prinsipyo ng linyang pangmasa kadluan ng
katarungan
Kailangan upang magpakatao at makapagtatag ng egalitaryang
lipunan
Kung saan walang alipin at walang magpapaalipin Hoy inaantok ka
na ba?
Bintang mong doble-kara ako hindi tapat sa pagsinta tusong
sugarol
Pilit kong hahagkan ang katawang nakahulagpos sa matimtimang
manalangin
7
Sabi nilay dyezebel kang haliparot mapanlinlang salamangkero ng
puso
Kung totoo ipagdiwang natin habang nag-tatagisan sa barikada
Ganday sumungaw sa balintataw nang bumaklas ang pintakasi
Ikaw ang tagapagsalaysay ng mababangong bangungot tunggalian
ng uri
Natarok mo ang pananagutan sa masalimuot na laberinto ng
paghihiganti
77
Nagsalin nagsanglat nagpatubo sa kahulugan ng sagisag himatong

haraya
Nilambungan ng tuksot aliw-iw ng walang-hiyang alok ng mga
kapitalista
Hindi dyugdyugan blues ito o tulo-laway rap ng malanding utak
Pumipintig ang pangambang nasulsulan ka ng kakutsabang
bulagsak
Umiigting ang angil ng pagsubok salat sa malambing na diga
Handa akong maglamay pasan ang pagsusumamong bumalik ka sa
piling ko
Kahangalan ang mangarap habang nadudurog ang tahanan mo
Sa lagim at ligalig lumantad ka Mahal Harapin ang sakdal ng
tadhana
Anong katuturan ng sining kung walang diwang malayang
magpapahalaga
Anong silbi ng tula sa mundong bartolina ng mga magulang at
kapatid
8
Paghiwalay mula sa siping ng inat paglalaro sa suso Ipukol ang
bola
Ito raw ang pinagmulan ng lahat sakunang di mabubura o
malilimutan
Nawalang kalingay laging hinahanap sa bawat tangis hibik
hagulgol
Multong dumadalaw sa agwat ng ating kamalayang magkahidwa
Ngunit ang batas ng kasarinlan ay hawak ng pangatlong tauhan
Na pumapagitan sa inat sanggol naghahati bumabalangkas ng
landas
Tila guwang sa dibdib na hindi mapupunan ang di-makitang bagay
Higit pa sa uhaw o gutom na walang makapapatid sukdulang
pananabik
78
Ilanlibong OFW ang naglakbay sa Tokyo London Roma

nakatanikala
Hinahanap pa rin ang nawala wariy malikmata kilalang ayaw
kilalanin
Nagipit sa dahas ng Patriyarkong humalili kina Legaspit
MacArthur
Inangking gintot pilak ay di makabubuntis sa baog na sinapupunan
Pagliripin na buhat sa di maiiwasang pangyayaring isa ay naging
dalawa
Ipagdasal mo man di na maisasauli ang luwalhati sa kandong ng
nag-aruga
Batas ng pagbabawal ang yumari ng tulay para sa nagtipang
kaluluwa
9
Sa wakas tanggap na ako ikaw ay likhang-isip lamang mga
konstruksiyon
Nakasalalay sa kabilang mukha ng buwan kung saan inalis
tinanggal
Lumihis sa tuwid na daan kumalag sa lilong kapangyarihan ng
Kapital
Iwaksi ang pag-aalinlangan tumalikod sa masamyong yakap ng
sirena
Itakwil ang pagpapanggap takasan ang pagkukunwari
pagbabalatkayo
Sa salamin ng takipsilim ilantad ang noo bunganga pisnging
sinampal
Kumalas sa bilibid ng lumang paniniwala tumakas lumayo
Baybayin ang kinathang pagkakaibat pagkakawangki ng babae sa
lalaki
Sa bawat tugma mapaparam ang karnabal ng libog at itinakdang
kasarian
79
Makulit ka mataray ok lang sa manliligaw dalubhasa sa biro at

tudyo
Isaloob ang paghahati ng magkabiyak Balatong saklolo ng laro
Siya nawa
Iuugnay nito ang butot lamang pinagwatak-watak ng diwatang kay
bagsik
Sandaling makaalpas sa pagkakulong sa piitan ng salapit pag-aari
Itanan ang taliwas at salungat bigay-kabig ng walang awang
kontradiksiyon
Oo tumakas paalam pumailanlang ang putang di na mabibili
ninuman
ISANG INTERBENSIYON: DALIT NG PANIBUGHO
Anong saklap galit poot pagngingitngit Ay inay ko

katarantadahun
Nagpapahiwatig na walang natutuhan sa mga pagkakamali
Himutok ng lalaking pinutulan ng tarugo Itigil na ang laro Itigil
Tumututol sa itinalaga ng karanasang pag-awat sa yapos ng ina
Nagtatangkang makasiping pa muli Teka pare ko dapat ka pa
bang ipatuli
Walang babaeng makatutugon sa isinumpang pagkasabik sa
guniguni
Ipinaglihi itong sugarol sa tusong anito bundat sa kasuwapangan
Baliw sa pag-aakalang masusupil ang mapagpalayang simbuyo
80
Ulol sa pag-asang may makabubusog o kaipalay makasasapat

Walang babaylan na makalulunas sa sugat mortal ng unang sakuna
Asawang magdudulot ng pulot-gatang makapupuno sa kawalan
Sa krisis ng bayang naghihimagsik isang sakit ang pansariling
katiwasayan
Pagliripin ito
paslangin man ang kabiyak walang galak o
kasiyahan
Halik ng ahas ni Medusa ang pabuya sa alipores nina Villa at
Abadilla
Hinagpis at lungkot pagkatapos ng seks Ay naku May bagong
balita ba
Dagok ng pagtuklas na ang tutubos sa ating dalawang walang pagaari
Ang nakapagitang masang bukal ng talinghaga at pagbubunyag
Samakatuwid sukat nang pandayin muli balik-suriin patingkarin
Ang sining ng pag-ibig sa namumurong apoy ng armadong
pakikibaka
81
NINE LOVE SONGS AND ONE INTERVENING

POEM OF JEALOUSY
___________________________________________________________
Translated by Charlie Samuya Veric

1.
Mad gamble of a loiterer good-for-nothing drunkard baffled
hesitant
A delinquent antagonist caught in the rails of doubt
Every attempt at weaving a poem is an adventure
Cast the die no certitude do the sign of the cross with the
wayward ball
No one can foretell where you will be thrust or dropped by this
dance
If you fall in love with a muse who brings thorns not grapes
No honor or respite is possible in the perils of creation
An accidental caress of tongue youre done the uttered word
cannot be salvaged
In an attempt to ensnare imprint the letter of an evasive
knowledge
In your eyelashes charm the lascivious wish takes aim
Every shift of the lip is a passionate plea mutinous prisoner
Each plan is aborted trap wavering of a libidinous spirit
Your wager is a waste alms to the Abu Sayyaf Think before betting
But pursuing desire does not obligate delight or sweetness
82
Deep in the tear and sweat of an imagination blinded by the lure of

language
.
Yes Beloved the problem is wheres the impetuous desire covetous

Choose between devotion to the muse and loyalty to the vow of a
red fighter
Who shall rule which aspiration can keep true to the hearts
yearning
No help or guide from Rosa Luxemburg and Alexandra Kollontai
Even sikolohiyang Pilipino is wanting in the ethos of hunger and
longing
Fumbling in the dark of hesitating what consciences aim is
What wish rides on the flesh of a beast that dreams
Beast translucent in the dream of paradise rich in sustenance and
mirth
Wretched being that God formed for ordeal and punishment
Will you not scream No Dont No I cant endure
Like it or not you must decide if not the word is pointless
Do you like the lines strut to be pleasant quickening the penis
Why divide two aspirations meant to be one
Like the twofold experience of fornication and breath breaking
World shall end learning the dream of their oneness
3.
There is only one end track the tangled road zigzag
Follow the anomalous turn of phrase slipshod stanzas and lines
The promise given shall be made however lost in the wilderness of
self
Where the spiteful lover waits O muse of paradox
83
The revolutions tactic and strategy is not perfected in reflection

The key to the question of practice is not in the riddles distillation
Cast the die once more perhaps you will accuse I am a mere
flatterer
Threaten not to yield the wish to seize victorys grail
Not to kneel before a false habit drunk and steeped in an
imperialist whorehouse
Do not break from the struggle to complete the miracle of your gift
Even if you wish to keep your silence and revel in the opulence of a
petit bourgeois life
You will not be allowed by your shielding beloved fighting
A sharp slap will greet if back is turned on seizing
The possibility of catching and fettering the most wished for in an
embrace
Ravenous for kiss insatiable covetous Eros jealous of flights
persistence
4.
Why on our second meeting Beloved you are evasive your Touch
untamed
There the soaring wing in the sky leaping scales in the cascade
The eyes movement bids farewell still I understand next to nothing
The dialectics is not mastered enough at ease with counting stars
Where are you Huseng Batute Counsel to the poet of the deified
maiden
Save the lost ones in the reshuffling gamble of word-rhyme
In the era of crisis when the conscience is deadened imperturbable
Any weapon of the critic is worthless no one wants to bolt the
incarceration
In love with slavery empty of courage without honor Who is to
blame
How will the people see the wrong if ones spirit is wronged
84
As if abuse is rational when one is entangled in a criminal system

Of what use is a melodious metaphor if there is no esteem for self
Art does not suffice if the victim is ill and dying
In propagandas gloom anguish and ravished honor is endured
Bullet and gun is essential when singing a love song in the dark
5.
Crossing Plaza Miranda I met you again Providential aid or mercy
Your gaze was a foreigners salutation your smile a dispersing dew
in the desert
Caught in anxiety you disturb scorn and resentment
Angel of the dark is their charge but for me you are the herald of
deliverance
In your eyes the grace of a blessed dawn multiplies
The secret that you christened with fulfillment is deciphered
Unforgivable is the surrender where the countrys innocence and
dignity is staked
I see you were terrified with the danger of the impending battle
In affection and accord you resolved to join Seek Investigate
I know that on the other side of acquiescence waited despair
cruelty doubt
One stroke of your finger the embers of desire flared again
Restrained feeling leapt over consoling in unison
You were leaving I looked at you my sense pretended not to see
I know you also have the heart for it hounding turning away from
the gyrating beast
Wordless when cornered a pain so cruel will explode
6.
85
How piteous to realize you have left leaving no direction

While the lover still searches for the word stammering
Stunned that you left your chronicler O treacherous Beloved
You accuse me of being a liar flatterer patronized by Ars Poetica
Fool is the poet picking stars whispering to the wind
Addicted to an aesthetics paid for by the bourgeoisie mad about
ownership
Yes Beloved many indeed daydream in the crisis of a sad country
I will not praise before the altar of luxury and squandering class
muse
Even if you dont trust my promise to serve you
Paddling in the blessing of a sexy sinning virgin has-been Bomba
Queen
Listen to the principle of the mass line spring of justice
Necessary to humanize and strengthen the egalitarian society
Where there is no slave and no slavish Ay are you sleepy already?
You accuse that I am Janus-faced unfaithful to love deceitful
gambler
I will kiss without consent the body freed from the ardently
prayerful
7.
They say youre a lustful mermaid trickster magician of the heart
If true lets celebrate while wrestling in the barricade
Beauty rose in the eyes horizon when the idol disintegrated
You are the storyteller of the perfumed nightmare and the clash of
classes
You found the responsibility in the complex labyrinth of revenge
Translated pawned and earned from the meaning of symbol route
imagination
Enveloped with the seduction and whisper of the capitalists
86
shameless bargain
This is not the dyugdyugan blues or salivating rap of a lascivious
mind
Dread throbs in the thought that an absentminded conspirator has
goaded you
The torments howl mounts lacking in sweet talk
I am ready to vigil burdened with a plea return to me
It is absurd to dream when your house is crumbling
In horror and fear appear my Beloved Face the judgment of fate
What is art if there is no spirit that freely appreciates value
What is poetry in the prison-world of parents and kin
8.
Separated from the mothers nearness and breast-playing
Throw the ball
This they say is the source of all disaster beyond erasure or
forgetting
Lost warmth is sought in every cry sob call
Ghost visiting the space of our contrary consciousness
But the law of independence is held by the third character
That stands between the mother and child dividing constructing
ways
Like a void in the heart that a lost thing cannot fill
Greater than thirst or inextinguishable hunger utmost desiring
How many OFWs were exiled to Tokyo London Rome shackled
Still looking for the disappeared as if charmed unrecognized
familiar
Caught in the Patriarchs violence heir to Legazpi and MacArthur
Recovered gold and silver cannot give life to a wasteland of a womb
Consider that from an ineluctable event one becomes two
87
Even if you pray the joy cannot be returned to the lap of the caring
The law of prohibition created the bridge for souls in tryst
9.
At last it is accepted that I you are a constructs imaginary
Dependent on the other face of the moon where taken removed
Strayed from the straight road swerving from the dark power of
Capital
Abandon doubt turn away from the mermaids fragrant embrace
Relinquish beguilement elude deception imposture
In the mirror of dusk reveal the forehead mouth slapped cheek
Desert the prison of old beliefs escape leave
Follow the imagined difference and sameness of woman and man
In every guess the carnival of wantonness and destined sex shall
perish
You are annoying bitchy its okay to the wooer skilled in gaiety
and stunt
Take to heart the division of the divided Doled out relief of the
game So be it
It will unite the bone and the flesh that a cruel goddess put asunder
The moment captivity in money and property is evaded
Elope with the opposite and the opposing give-and-take of a
merciless contradiction
Yes escape goodbye the whore that no one can buy now flies
AN INTERVENTION: POEM OF JEALOUSY

How pitiful anger hate exasperation Ay inay ko imbecility
88
It shows that nothing is learned from the errors

Grievance of a man whose dick is severed Stop the game Stop
Opposing the fate of being estranged from maternal embrace
Attempting to fuck again Wait, my friend, do you still need to be
circumcised
No woman can satisfy the doomed craving of the mind
This gambler is conceived in cunning deity corpulent with avarice
Mad in thinking that the unchaining drive can be overcome
Foolishly hoping there is gratification or perhaps sufficiency
No priestess can heal the mortal wound of the original disaster
Wife bearing delight that will fill the void
In the crisis of a country in revolt personal quiet is a malady
Think of this even if the wife is murdered no pleasure or
satisfaction
Kiss of Medusas snake is the reward to Villa and Abadillas minions
Grief and melancholy after sex Ay naku What else is new
The blow of discovery shall save the two of us who are without
property
The masses in between spring of metaphor and revelation
Therefore sufficient unto the day to forge anew critique intensify
The art of love for the pure fire of the armed struggle
89
LABINTATLONG PAGSUBOK SA PAGTUKLAS NG

ANNINO NG KAGANDAHAN
___________________________________________________________
Isang patak ng pawis sa utak ang umapaw sa lalamunan ng nasaid
naalis
Huwag busalan kundi isabog ang kamyerdahang bukambibig
ng tusong kulasisi
Baog ang puso ng artistang nagumon sa malambing na bulwak ng
talinghaga
Anong panganib kung naligaw ang ahas na naghunos sa dimahulong yungib
Iukit sa noo ang kutitap ng bituing ngayoy abong lumulutang sa
dalampasigan
Panatang nasadlak sa pangakoy kumakalas sa ngiti ng iyong
bukang-liwayway
Samakatwid hungkag ang karunungang isinugal sa laro ng
konsiyensiyang palpak
Lampungan ng pusa sa bubong ay walang lihim para sa budhi ng
petiburgesya
Sa pusod tumatalab ang tili ng pagluwal ng pangarap sa mutyang
biktima ng AIDS
Kinakailangan ang ilang kung masalimuot ang paglinang
ng latak sa ulirat
Sinong pusakal ang magbibilang sa usok at alingagawngaw ng
panaginip
Sa walang hanggahang dagat hanggang Kathmandu
nagbabakasakali pa rin
Sa dura ng nakasimangot na sinta mahahagilap
ang ambil ng takip-silim
90
13 EXPERIMENTS TO DISCOVER
THE SHADOW OF BEAUTY
_______________________________________________________
One drop of sweat from the brain overflows into the throat of
the chalice all drained
Dont muzzle but scatter the shitty aphorisms of the shrewd green
parakeet
Sterile the heart of the artist addicted to the soothing ejaculation of
metaphors
What danger if snakes got lost moulting in caves unknown
Chisel on the forehead the twinkle of stars now ashes floating on the
seashore
Vows entangled in promises struggling free from the ensnaring
smile of your dawn
Therefore hollow is the wisdom gambled in the play of conscience
all fucked up
Snarling of cats on the roof disclose no secret for the petty-bourgeois
will-power
On the heart cuts the shriek of dreams being born from the womb of
the loved one victimized by AIDS
The void is needed if nurturing the minds dregs proves bewildering
Whos the scoundrel who will count the smoke and echo of dreams
From the boundless sea to Kathmandu you are wagering on chance
On the spit of the smirking beloved youll find the elucidation of
twilight
91
.NASCITUR
_______________________________________________________
Seizing her antelope-skin gloves

The lover tracks the cold disconsolate routes
And passages she has pursued; her hands
On his naked back lie exposed.
On first reckoning his mind perceives
A stalking horse on manured ground;
She hides behind the nightmare of her mask
Preserving dark aboriginal fires.
At their contact she shudders on the beds edge;
Her vision of the Obelisk where they met
Strikes her heart with mantic maniac fury;
He pounces in ambush, horn unsheathed.
An odalisque in his dream lies supine;
The stallion wields his proud sex erect
Cleaving through the dark tangle of her hair,
To chthonic depths of her loins cleaving.
Yoked by violence and daemonic lust,
They copulate. Locked, the prey and beast of prey
Her gloves become a fetish for his orgy
On some far crag a lost antelope rears jagged horns.
92
AY, NAKU, MUNTIK NA AKONG MAKALIMOT,

KASAMANG MARIE & RUTH--_________________________________________________________
Habang humihigop ng di-kunoy malahimalang tubig na bukal sa

kanlungan ng Birhen sa Ephesus, pansamantalang natigil kami sa
paglalakbay sa Turkiya, nakaligtaan kong kilatisin ang bigat ng
pagsusumamo ni Lorena Santos na ilitaw ng rehimeng Arroyo ang
kanyang amang dinukot ng ISAFP, si Leo Velasco.
Habang pinanonood ang mga nagsasayaw na dervish sa Konya,

pananampalatayang ipinagbawal ni Kemal Ataturk upang
maisulong ang makabagong bansa, sumingit ang palaisipan ni
Rumi
Kung ikaw ay kasama ng lahat liban sa akin, wala kang kasama;
kung ikaw ay walang kasama kundi ako lamang, kasama no na ang
lahat
Walang bisa, patuloy ang pagkawala nina Jonas Burgos, Sherlyn
Cadapan, Karen Empeno paano ito, Rumi, kahit narito ka,
sapilitang pinagwawala pa rin sila?
Nakababad sa alingasngas sa TV sa isang otel sa Izmir tungkol sa
halikan nina Richard Gere at isang aktres taga-Indya (kamukha ba
ni Ruffa?), o sa orgies nina Paris Hilton at Britney Spears, halos
nawaglit na sa isip ang pagpaslang kina Diosdado Fortuna, Sotero
Llamas, Lizelda Estorba-Cunado, at ilan daang biktima ng terorismo
nina Bush-Arroyo.
Ay naku, muntik ko nang malimot sina Alice Claver, Juvy Magsino
at Leima Fortuna dahil pinagkakaguluhan ng petiburgis sa Ankara
ang Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows at mga huling pakulo ni O.J.
Simpson sa If I Did It.
Maramdamin ba o tiyak na may karamdaman?
93
At sa Antalya naman, kasiping sina Jennifer Lopez at Catherine

Zeta-Jones at dyugyugan ng mga belly-dancer kaindayog ng
makiring alon ng dagat Mediteranyo, tuluyang napalis sa isip ang
sakrispisyo nina Cathy Alcantara, Audie Lucro at ilan pang
susunodmga bangkay na walang pangalan kundi sa pagsisikap ng
KARAPATAN.
At sa lilim ng moskeng asul sa Istanbul, malayo na sa mga mosaic ng
mga santot anghel sa kubling yungib sa Cappadocia, sinubok kong
baguhin ang bugtong ni Rumi:
Kung kasama mo si Mario Auxilio o si Eden Marcellana, wala nang
iba pa, kasama mo na sa tabi mo ang sambayanang humahatol at
dumudurog sa pasistang Estado
Kahit na isang taong pinagmalupitan, tulad ni Lourdes Rubrico,
kahit nagayuma ka ng ngiting malagkit ng dalawang Medusa sa
haliging marmol ng cistern ng Hagia Sophia, lagi kang gagambalain
ng gunitang umaantak, tigib ng hirap at pighating tiniis at titiisin
lagi kang pupukawin ng mga inulila saan ka man maglagalag, sa
guhong imperyo ng Romano o ng Ottoman, ng Britanya o
Pransiya
Ozymandias, igala mo ang paningin
o saanmang sulok ng imperyo ng kapital ng USA, tutugisin ka ng
mga ahas na buhok ng diwatang umaapaw sa biyaya ng kalikasang
walang pag-iimbot at kasakiman, walang pagmamalabis, armadong
diwata ng katarungan at ng bayang naghihimaksik.
94
JEEZUS, I ALMOST FORGOT, COMRADES

MARIE & RUTH
_________________________________________________________
While sipping whats believed to be miraculous water from the
spring of the Virgins refuge in Ephesus, while we stopped briefly in
our travels in Turkey, I failed to appreciate thoroughly Lorena
Santos plea for the Arroyo regime to surface her father, Leo Velasco,
forcibly disappeared by the secret agents of the Armed Forces of
the Philippines.
While watching the dancing dervishes of Konya, a religious sect
ordered by Kemal Ataturk not to politicize religion in order to
advance the newly-founded secular state, Rumis aphorism popped
up:
If you are with everyone but me, you are with no one; if you
are with no one but me, you are with everyone.
Unavailing, the disappeareds remain no showJonas Burgos,
Sherlyn Cadapan, Karen Empenohow come, Rumi, even though
youre here, no surfacings allowed?
Drowned in TV trivia while snuggled into a hotel in Izmir, distracted
by Richard Geres kissing an Indian actress (does she look like
Ruffa?), or by the orgies of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, these
spectacles banished the thought of the extra-judicial killing of
Diosdado Fortuna, Ricardo Ramos, Lizelda Estorba-Cunado, and
hundreds of victims of the Bush-Arroyo collusion.
Jeeezus, I almost forgot Alice Claver, Juvy Magsino and Leima Fortu
while the pettybourgeois crowd in Ankara fuzz over Harry Potter &
the Deathly Hallows and the latest gossip over O. J. Simpsons
potboiler If I Did It
Empathizing or definitely afflicted?
And in Antalya, schmoozing with Jennifer Lopez and Catherine
Zeta-Jones titillated by the belly-dancers gyrations in rhythm with
the lusty waves of the Mediterraneanurged from consciousness
are the sacrifices of Cathy Alcantara, Audie Lucero and many others
95
who followedcorpses without names except for KARAPATANs

painstaking endeavor.
And in the shadow of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, far from the
mosaics of angels and saints in the shrouded caves of Cappadocia, I
tried to adjust Rumis riddle:
If you are with Mario Auxilio or Eden Marcellana, and no one else,
You are also with the entire community judging and destroying the
fascist State.
Even if only with the presence of a single abused person, like
Lourdes Rubrico, even though youve been seduced by the beguiling
smile of the two Medusas on the marble pillars of the Cistern of
Hagia Sophia, youll be forever hounded by those throbbing
memories, soaked with pain and sorrows suffered and endured
youll be pursued by those widowed and orphaned wherever you
roam, plunged in the ruins of the Roman and Ottoman empires, the
rubble of the French or British empires
Ozymandias, gaze at the vast wasteland around you!
Or wherever you happen to find yourself in whatever corner of the
US empire of capital, youll be pursued by the coiled halo of the
goddess overflowing with blessings from Nature bereft of greed
and covetuousness and cruelty, the armed angel of justice and the
revolutionary masses.-
96
THE WAY THINGS ARE

_______________________________________________________
On the antique panels

The birds design an arc,
Shadows of souls perhaps
Wounded in their flight.
We converge in the room
Full of artificial calm
While blind animals
Screech back into the womb.
Behind unbelieving walls
We wait for a miracle
With daggers to console
Us wrought in woe
Enchanting to the bone;
The birds now circulate
On the ceilings edge
Droppings of angels
May nourish the exchange
We are possessed of and by
May that fancy console
Every animal that dies.
97
CADENZA TO THREE FABULOUS SISTERS

____________________________________________________________
I
Your fingers, Alexandra, play on the suave arc.
What sexy tricks you spin?
Deaths thrust drives down deep
(Dereglement of the senses) where underground rivers rush, leap
headlong
Your lover caught in the web, fragile wind weaving
round agile heels.
For you, in the turbulence of your foul breath,
Head over heels, Ive lost my soul.
II
What shall I ask of Alegria, my frigid accomplice?
Weather-beaten gargoyles molded after raw flesh suckled in
sculptors sweat
I envy their repose.
Enwombed in the grotto, from sensual toil
unwinding,
you dispose of sin and guilt bled from the bowels
Your contours, festooned with the lightning of my agony and fables
of my descent,
your tongues legerdemain
counterpoints my
snoring.
98
III
Steel-skinned Aida, what do the tickled loins say? My widow, From
this flux, what release?
Go, then, spit on virgin killjoys!
Decapitate this erect penis, unscrew it
what ecstasy conquers the blood?
Yielding a burning palm in the desert of this harrowing night,
your mystique obscures
the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
IV
The thread unwinds from the tangled skein, with a multitude of
twists
a touch topples tombstones.
What crooked tooth demands satiety?
Let sister, wife or mother arrest the obsidian wind
and halt the vortex of the galaxy for a while.
Yawning, I wake up
only to have my poor suspenders cut
Merci! Mercy!
99
LAGALAG SA MAKATI
__________________________________________________________
Alumpihit sa umaatikabong trapiko, wala ka pang trabaho ilang

buwan nat pasabit-sabit lamang.
Nagbilang ng postet bituin, inabot nang siyam-siyam.
Sumasala sa oras, narinig mo ang Like a Virgin ni Madonna.
Bulate sa tiyan o sa lupa? Batid mo ang likaw ng bituka ng mga
mariwasa, pero ang
payo nilay mangisay ka muna.
Mailap sa himas kung nagigipit....

New World Order na raw kaya balewala na ang iyong ngitngit.
Kaladkarin mo ang barot saya habang nagpupuyos
Pinagtakluban na ng tala at putik ang pamumuti ng iyong mga
mata.
Nakasupalpal sa pusod ang makinasyon ng burgesyang lipunan
ngunit anong magagawa.
Mama, palimos nga. [Sa malas, malas.]
Kapus-palad, kumain-dili, habang nagpipista ang mga bantaysalakay ng demokrasya.
Bagamat lalay-dila na, hindi lamang lawit ang pusod o tumbong.
100
Sa talampakan moy nakintal ang hieroglipo ng mga ginisa sa

sariling mantika habang tinutukso ka ng katas-Saudi.
Magkano ba, Miss? [Kalakalin ang sarili upang di magdildil ng
poot.]
Natisod sa damo, baka ang talas moy sa bato tumalab. Ingat lang....
Ayaw mong magkamot ng tiyan. Malalamangan ba ng pagong ang
unggoy?
Kalansay ng mga tangke at mga bungo ng pumatay at namatay ang
naghambalang sa disyertong inaangkin ng Kuwait at Iraq.
Kasarinlan? O pagsasarilinan?
Hipong tulog na tangay ng agos....
Pumalaot ka sa Ayala Avenue, pikitmatang nilulunok ang bayag sa

lalamunan.
Humahagibis ang tren sa Dr. Zhivago pero hanggang Tutuban lang
tayo.
Sa bartolina ng panaginip sumisingit at lumalagos ang amoy ng
pulbura.
Walang itulak kabigin ang pagtitiis, kumapit na lang sa patalim.
101
WANDERLUST IN MAKATI
__________________________________________________________
Whirling in the maniacal traffic, youre still jobless and traipsing
here and there.
Counting posts and stars, you arrive at nirvana.
Unable to catch time, you are assailed by Madonnas Like a
Virgin.
Worms in the guts or in dirt?
You know the twisting innards of the
bourgeoisie but their advice for you is to bear the pangs,

convulsing....
Eluding caresses when youre up the wall.
New World Order is here, they say, so to hell with your rage.
Drag your cloak while fuming
Meteors and mud shroud your whitening eyeballs.
Pushed up your wazu are the machinations of capitalist society, but
what can you do?
Sir, alms.... (Pluck it out, bad luck.)
Dispossessed, disinherited, while the ghouls of democracy feast
on....
Though your tongues hanging out, your navel and anus are still
stuck....
On your footsole is inscribed the hieroglyphic of those fried in their
own fat while tempted by Saudi juice.
How much are you, Miss? (Sell yourself so as not to lick the salt of
102
contempt.)
Tripped by leaves of grass, your sharpness will sensitize the rock.
Beware....
You dont want to scratch your belly. Can the turtle overtake the
monkey?
Skeletons of tanks and bones of the killers and their victims crisscross the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq.
Autonomy? Or each one grabbing for ones self?
You wandered up to Ayala Avenue. With eyes shut swallowing
your balls down your throat.
Prawns dreaming, carried by the waves....
You rush on the train in Dr. Zhivago (the movie) but we only reach
Tutuban station.
In the dungeon of your fantasies penetrates and seeps in the scent of
gunpowder.
Because forbearance cannot yield nor garner, hold tight the sharpest
blade you can grab.
103
DIALOGUE IN THE DARK

_______________________________________________________
He:
We kisswhat is that
Dark forsaken cry?
Beneath the stair lies
The body we have known
With deceitful grip
See, eyes at the corners flash!
She:
Quiet! Harness
Your head lulled in my arms
To the moons aplomb;
Do not create a mess
Out of your natural mind:
Its only the tricky wind.
He:
I distrust tender speech
That tempts my skin laid bare;
Who would not despair
Given this jeweled deceit
Hid under the flesh
Sepulcher of cold caress!
104
Voice Beneath the Stair
Pity for all innocence

That disciplines the womb
Pity for all wisdom
That dreams the bodys expense
Pity for all lovers now
That wake in a trance
105
EVEN AS FAR AS ASHLEY, NORTH DAKOTA,

WHERE YOU WERE BORN
_________________________________________________________
where the prairie dogs are wont to exhume

the carcasses of the pioneers
Dawn--there are seeds of the future
interred in your backyard
where the cock crows
bewilder the household ghosts
the strudels and apple pies
the all-American girl with her pompons
ghost of a past
shrouded by mists,
cobwebs inside
the sun dispels
the sky
shocked into radiance
even as far as the missile silos
of North Dakota
where the rule of capital
lies entombed
for soon
the fists of revolution
will shake
the still morning air
106
burying the sweat and blood of workers

sowing the roads and trails
toward your birthplace
where the flowers
impregnate the wind
blowing the promise and beauty of your name
your presence
uncircumscribed by the burning horizon
[Fall 1979]
107
ANCHE LASS A ASHLEY, IN NORD DAKOTA,

DOVE SEI NATO
_______________________________________________________
dove I cani della prateria sono avvezzi a riesumare

la carcasse dei pioneri,
Dawn / Alba ci sono I semi del futuro
sepolti nel tuo cortile
dove il canto dei galli
sconcerta I fantasmi di casa
gli strudel e le torte di mele
la ragazza tutto-America coi suoi cannon
fantasmi del passato
avvolti nella nebbia,
ragnatele nascoste
che il sole disperde
il cielo
sorpreso de splendore
anche nelle basi missilistiche del Nord Dakota
dove giace sepolta
le legge del capitale
perch presto
il pugno della rivoluzione
scuoter
108
laria immobile del giorno

che seppellisce sudore e sangue
dei lavoratori
che traccia strade e orme
verso il tuo luogo natale
dove I fiori
impregnati di vento
che soffia la promessa e la belleza
del tuo nome
la tua presenza
non circoscritta
dallorizzonte in fiamme
( Tradotta in italiano da Bruno Gulli )
109
110
THE LOVERS ADDRESS

________________________________________________________
If you speak, once you speak, I shall listen

When we go toward each other till we meet
And the curtain and our pale masks fall
Between us; when our hands join
And the shadows stretch round us till we are
Only a tower that leans to the shore of sleep.
Walls surround us, fugitives run
Till they are broken, crushed, ruined by dreams
That have no end but only a beginning
Thoughts that open gates strike out
The lights and leave the bells dew-washed
And rung by pigeons with a lost message.
Our lords command us to be pierced
Till death comes with the unicorn, unless the cocks crow
Brings to the throat a gift of tomorrow
And they become witness to what happens
Under eyelids that flutter, the promise beneath
Weeping boughs; and lips that, when petals
Drop tears and lose their scent, tremble.
We shall waken only to the horns blast.
111
KUNG ANO ANG ISINISIWALAT NG

SALAWIKAIN
_______________________________________________________
Nadantayan ng kung anong patak ng dagta o katas ang lamang

sinuyod
Nagitla sa bulong ng himlayan
Sa teorya ng pagsisisi anong bisa ng luha sa sinansalang udyok
at himok
sapagkat kamiy tao lamang
Walang sala ang hangaring hinugot sa matris ng nagkatawang-lupa
Sumingit ang kirot sa pagitan ng dalawang guhit na nagsalikop
Nakiramay sa paghasik ng asin sa sariwang sugat
Dumaluhong magkalingkis di sapol ang praktika sa pagkamulat ng
birhen
Salain man ang libog may pagsisi pa rin
Matutuklasan sa gilid ng hukay ang bakas ng dagta sa himlayang
sinuyod
Nakabulagta
Pakiramdaman ang wikang kay hapdi ng walang salang salarin
112
WHAT PROVERBS AND MAXIMS BETRAY

_______________________________________________________
Brushed by what drop of sap or juice the flesh all harrowed to bits
Surprised by the whisper of the place weve lain on
In the theory of penance whats the virtue of tears for
repressed urges and temptation
because were only human
No fault this desire pulled from the womb of one assuming carnal
shape
Pain creeps into the space between two lines curving toward each
other
We mourn while the salt is sown on the raw wound
Rushing reckless
all entwined missing the praxis of the virgins
awakening
Though lust is forced through the sieve theres remorse still
left over
On the edge of the pit one will discover the trace of sap on the divan
harrowed to bits
Fallen prostrate
Apprehend the language, excruciatingly painful,
of the sinner who knows no crime
113
FINITA LA COMMEDIA
_______________________________________________________
After the dwarfs, the Fat Lady, Miss Medusa and

the three-legged thing,
What more?
But he who was once a child
As once I was could never have so much of a good thing:
Rides on serpents, jets, rockets
Peeeek-a-boo!
How about the greatest show,
remember?
Ssssssh. Blackout: drumbeats!
The curtains part,
someone puts out a knee, a naked leg
Out half-nude under spotlight, the striptease cavorts
Oooooops! pardon
(mistook her cue)
See the belly-dancer, that fabulous virgin, from
the hangmans tightrope.
There she clings
disrobing her soul on the trapeze
Someone flees behind the scaffolding, a lull before the storm
Ssssssh.
114
Recall that card dealer, wise

and wizened, with his parlor games?
Ogling at you with bicycle glasses when he plucked your life
The cards he shuffled accused him (shaman without shame)
Of a tricky wager: the clocks cuckoo caught his sleeve.
But the organ-grinder understands his grief.
On a stage of mannequins, refuting Javas gravity,
That Superman impelled by hairgrown vanity
Proves native prowess a matter of will;
his genius was the genie
so damn heaven be
done!
But the circus clown (how his costume becomes him)
Makes earth a spring to catapult him far beyond
Smoky roofs and there
to swing from the moons blue arc.
Carnivals now will exhibit that megaton wonder:
the Fall-out Freak.
115
116
ONLY A MOMENT AGO

_______________________________________________________
Only a moment ago
How soon the glass deceives: your lovely face
In woven fountlight betrayed the flesh,
Promised a thousand recognitions
In reckless labyrinths of your hair.
Breath hurled incarnates your breast
Only a moment ago
In Heraclitean fire!
The radium light
Weaves, winds, weaves through the things around us
And kindles the outline of your face.
Your mouthwhat insidious circle!
Implies delicate cataclysms
Making the charnelhouse a kiln
Only a moment ago.
Your eyes spell a just and merciful night.
What motley disguise? whose tears will transfigure the moon?
When shall your lovers rejoice
As natures self becomes you?
Until
Eyesockets in gloom gleam
Only a moment ago.
117
THE DANDYS SMILE FROM THE BOOGIEWOOGIE PLANETARIUM

_______________________________________________________
Arts long and lifes a damned mess!

Says Pierrot, thinking the bomb
His old bleeding heart will surely blast
But who knows what ghostly slime
Shall then crystallize his gestures?

Pierrots contours control his knowledge
And his grin penetrates all tortures:
Arts long and lifes a damned mess!
118
ADIOS, MARIQUITA LINDA

_________________________________________________________
O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust
the limits of the possible.
Pindar
Vapors wreathe this afternoon of All Souls Day.

The morning dew has grown sour,
Generations sprung from the grass
Attend stone angels in cool white robes.
And yet you want love august and pure,
Your right hand disowns your left;
Your innocence becomes you there before
White glaciers of tombs, white candlelights.
Ethereal in ether, fire to cinders subsides;
The carcass to its hole returns;
I seek the end of vanity and self-deceiving pride;
But you want all, all or nothing.
We kept our tryst before these mossy marbles
Praying that souls will keep their peace in turn
Until dreams revolve into nightmare
And icy delirium of the blood.
Now the dark has grown so old and trembling.
Could the statues, shrouds, crosses, protect us
From lusty rage and fury of the night?
But love, love has disenchanted everything.
119
ADIOS, MARIQUITA LINDA!

_______________________________________________________
Los vapores hace guirnaldas esta tarde de Todo Dia de la Alma.
El rocio de la manana ha crecido agrio,
Las generaciones saltaron del cesped
Asista a angeles de la piedra en batas blancas frescas.
Y mas usted quiere el amor agosto y puro,
Su mano derecha repudia su izquierda;
Su inocencia llega a ser usted alli antes de
Glaciares blancos de tumbas, luces de una velas blancas.
Etereo en el eter, el fuego a carbonillas baja;
El cuerpo descarnado a sus regresos del hoyo;
Busco el finde la vanidad y enganando de si del orgullo
Pero usted quiere todo, todo o nada.
Mantuvimos nuestra cita antes estos marmoles musgosos
Que ora que las almas mantendran su paz en cambio
Hasta que suenos giren en la pesadilla
Y el delirio helado de la sangre.
Ahora la oscuridad ha crecido tan viejo y temblar.
Mantos, las cruces nos podrian proteger las estatuas
De rabia y furia lujuriosas de la noche?
Pero el amor, el amor ha desencantando todo.
120
HAIL AND FAREWELL

__________________________________________________
Mayakovskys suicide
Possessed us like that tailing s
Of his name above.
Scholars have explained
This phenomenon:
Its grammar,
Its aesthetics.
But Mayakovsky is our kin
We also reek
Of incense
And formalin.
121
SA LOOB AT LABAS NG BAYAN KONG SAWI:

EMERGENCY SIGNALS FROM
A FILIPINO EXILE
______________________________________________________________
Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan

ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan.
[One who does not look back to where he came
from will not reach his destination.]
Ancient Tagalog proverb
By Way of Prologue
Inside and outside my country, tyranny reigns.

Thus began the unforgettable narrative of Florante at Laura (1838) by
Francisco Balagtas, a poem recognized as the inaugural discourse of
Filipino nationalism. It inspired popular and ilustrado agitation,
including the Cavite Mutiny of 1872 that led to the execution of the
three martyr-priests Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez, and Jacinto
Zamora.
In his travels in Europe, Jose Rizal, the national hero,
constantly read Balagtass awit that inspired his novels Noli me
tangere and El Filibusterismo; smuggled into the islands, Rizals
writings acted as emergency signals that sparked the Katipunan
revolt of 1896. Charged for being filibusteros in the wake of the Cavite
Mutiny, influential Filipino intellectuals were deported by the
Spanish colonial government to Marianas Islands. Rizal himself was
exiled to Dapitan, Mindanao, in 1892 four years before being shot on
29 December 1896, in Manila, the capital city.
During Spanish rule, the physical movement of the Indios was
tightly regulated, under strict surveillance by both secular and
122
spiritual authorities. Outside and inside the colony, the Filipino

subaltern was a marked man. Women, of course, were confined to
domestic and institutional prisons and their disciplinary regimes.
Space was systematically policed, monitored, and demarcated. After
Marianas Islands, Guam (not counting the prison of Montjuich in
Barcelona where Rizal and Isabelo de los Reyes were once interned)
became the next destination for insurgents. After the United States
crushed the revolutionary forces of the first Philippine Republic, it
sent the most distinguished Filipino insurgent Apolinario Mabini to
Guam for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. Others chose Hong Kong,
Japan, or recalcitrant solipsism as alternative surrogates for the
occupied homeland.
In the period of direct US imperial domination, space came
under the rule of market capital and commodity exchange. The
practice of removal or transporting Filipinos from their regional
habitat to other parts of the Empire would no longer be called
deportation or exile but recruitment or migrant passagemainly to
the Hawaii sugar plantations. Although Filipinos were now US
wards, still, Pedro Calosa, leader of the Tayug revolt, was
banished from Hawaii to the Philippine Islands territory for the
crime of union organizing. In the next decades, the generation of
Carlos Bulosan and Philip Vera Cruzthousands of dispossessed
peasants and workersshifted their port of entry to San Francisco,
Los Angeles, and Seattle to become the migrant farm workers and
cannery workers who would pioneer the heroic project of mobilizing
the multiethnic US proletariat from the 1930s to the 1960s, ending
with the formation of the United Farmworkers of America.
Meanwhile, subaltern pensionados, some schooled by the
soldiers who defeated Aguinaldo, traveled to US universities under
contract. They returned to serve as bureaucrats and propagandists in
the US colonial administration and, afterwards, in the
Commonwealth experiment of neocolonialism under Manuel
Quezon and in the successive post-World War II neocolonial
regimes. . A lonely deviant was Jose Garcia Villa. His revolt against
hypocritical bourgeois morality (which the pensionados symbolized)
and surviving feudal mores led to his self-exile, first in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, as a melancholy soul, and then to New York City as a
kind of hybrid denizen of the internal colonies of the metropole.
Although celebrated today by a few isolated Filipino writers, Villa
has never really been admitted to the mainstream canon of American
literature, so that no country or people can really grant him any
credential or status of belonging to a distinct cultural heritage except
the Philippine nation-state and the handful of Filipinos who care
about an emergent self-determined national culture.
123
Cosmopolitanism or the universal citizenship of globalization is still

a mirage, a seductive alibi, for neocolonials.
Today, Filipinos count unofficially as the largest Asian
American groupmore than three millionin the United States. No
longer dominant in the agribusiness of the West Coast, they now
supply hands to the service industries (housework, health care,
tourist enterprises) throughout the metropolis. Some argue that
General Cesar Taguba of recent fame as investigator of the Abu
Ghraib prison scandals (notwithstanding the shocking revelation of
his real experience in the military) may testify to the distance
Filipinos have come from being cooks in the White House or
stewards in the US Navy. As everyone notes, however, the
community is more scattered and divided politically, certainly
economically (social class), than other nationalities, owing chiefly to
the impoverished, subordinated plight of their country of origin.
What is more ominous is that after September 11, 2001, several
hundred Filipinos have been summarily deported, and many more
are threatened by exclusion or expulsion, under the controversial
USA Patriot Act and other State terrorist measures. We seem to be
returning to the time when Filipinos were hunted and lynched by
White vigilantes in Washington and California, or else exhibited as
exotic specimens in various industrial exposition sites or safely
policed shopping bazaars. We are again considered an important
target population.
Of more consequence today is the unprecedented diaspora
of 10 million Filipinos around the world, mainly as domestics,
semiskilled workers, caregivers, entertainers, and professionalsthe
Philippines has surpassed other countries in becoming the largest
supplier of contract labor (the infamous Guantanamo detention cells
were built by Filipino workers). However, this has also meant that
the image of the Filipino has become that of servants of
globalization, as one textbook puts it.
The following reflectionsin truth, fragments from an exiles
journalswere written in the mid-1990s to address this altered
situation of the Filipino abroad, at the end of the Cold War and the
beginning of the era of what is now labeled the clash of
civilizations with the war on terrorism as its offshoot. It is
coincidentally the era of the homeless, the displaced, the refugee of
genocidal wars. It is the era of the overseas Filipino worker, of Flor
Contemplacion, and the contrived scourge of the Abu Sayyaf.
Individual or personal cases of Filipino exile have metamorphosed
into the generalized plight of economic refugees or of political
asylum cases (like Benigno Aquino Jr. in the period of the Marcos
dictatorship), migrs, expatriates, and into some kind of diaspora
124
sponsored by the World Bank/International Monetary Fundof

course, a diaspora with Filipino specific characteristics, not to be
confused with the prototypical Jewish diaspora, or subsequent
replicas (Chinese, Indian, African).
Exile has now assumed multiple masks. Victim of Zionism
and Western imperialism, the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said
describes exile as the unhealable rift forced between a human being
and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential
sadness can never be surmounted (Reflections in Exile and Other
Essays, 2000). He is echoing the great Dantes elegy of the exile in
Divina Commedia: You will leave everything loved most dearly; and
this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. Bewailing the
predicament of millions of Palestinians, and by extension, millions of
refugees all over the world (now including Filipinos), Said attests to
the pathos of exile in the loss of contact with the solidity and the
satisfaction of earth. This pathos of alienation does not, I think, befit
the examples offered by Rizal, Mabini, or sacrificed representatives
of the Filipino nation/people-in-the-making. Nonetheless, my
untimely intervention in the book From Exile to Diaspora (1998) can
be considered an attempt to recover the palpability of Filipino
earth via the route of the Filipino proverb cited as epigraph and its
allusion to the nascent reality of beleaguered but liberated zones in
the homeland (homecoming is thus always a permanent possibility
wherever and whenever we commit ourselves to the principles of
social justice and communal-democratic sovereignty), which are the
places of hope and eventual reunion. Despite local differences and
multiple languages, the submerged rallying cry of all Filipinos
abroad, of all Filipinos overseas, is Tomorrow, see you in Manila!
_____________________
It has been almost forty years now, to this longest day, 21
June 1996, of my sojourn here in the United States ever since we left
Manila. The time of departure can no longer be read in the number
of passports discarded, visas stamped over and over again. A
palimpsest to be deciphered, to be sure. But you can always foretell
and anticipate certain things. For example, when someone meets you
for the first time, this Caucasianin general, Westernstranger
would irresistibly and perhaps innocently (a reflex of
commonsensical wisdom) always ask: And where are you from?
Alas, from the red planet Mars, from the volcanic terra of the as yet
undiscovered satellite of Andromeda, from the alleys of Tondo and
the labyrinths of Avenida Rizal. . . .
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman delineates the possible lifestrategies that denizens of the postmodern era can choose: stroller,
125
vagabond, tourist, player. In a world inhospitable to pilgrims, I opt

for the now obsolete persona of the exile disguised as itinerant and
peripatetic student without credentials or references, sojourning in
places where new experiences may occur. No destination or destiny,
only a succession of detours and displacements.
Apropos of the sojourner, Cesar Vallejo writes during his
exile in Paris, 12 November 1937: Acaba de pasar sin haber venido (He
just passed without having come). A cryptic and gnomic utterance.
One can interpret this economy of the psyche thus: for the sake of a
sustained bliss of journeying, the passenger (the heroine of the
passage) forfeits the grace or climax of homecoming. But where is
home? Home is neither on the range nor valley nor distant shoresit
is no longer a place, but rather a site, or locus, to which you can
return no more, as Thomas Wolfe once elegized. We have not yet
reached this stage, the desperate act of switching identities (as in
Michaelangelo Antonionis The Passenger, where the protagonists
itinerary ends in the ad hoc, repetitious, inconsequential passage
into anonymous death) so as to claim the spurious originality of an
I, the monadic ego, a.k.a. the foundation of all Western
metaphysics. Our postdeconstructionist malaise forbids this detour,
this escape. Antonionis existential stranger forswears the loved
ones offer of trust, finding danger even boring and trivial. After all,
you are only the creaturenot yet a cyborgshunted from one
terminus to another, bracketed by an a-methodical doubt and
aleatory suspicion.
So here we are, here being merely a trope, a figure without
referent or denotation. To such a denouement has Western
consumerized technological society come, trivializing even Third
World revolutions and violence as hackneyed cinematic fare, a
quotidian banality.
Beyond Rangoon is the latest of such commodities in the highcultural supermarket of the Western metropolis. The setting is no
longer Burma but Myanmar. The names dont matter; what is
needed is some exotic location on which to transplant a white
American womans psyche suffering a horrendous trauma:
discovering the murdered bodies of her husband and son upon
coming home from work. Desperate to put this horror behind her,
she and her sister then join a tour to Myanmar. Soon she gets
involved in the popular resistance against a ruthless military
dictatorship. So what happens? Carnage, melodramatic escapades,
incredible violence and slaughter, until our heroine begins to
empathize with the unruly folk and arguably finds her identity by
rediscovering her vocation; as physician, at the end of the film,
without much ado she begins to attend to the victims without
126
thought of her own safety or pleasure. She is reconciled with the

past, finding substitutes for the dead in Third World mutilated
bodies. And so white humanity redeems itself again in the person of
this caring, brave, daring woman whose rite of passage is the
thematic burden of the film. It is a passage from death to life, not
exactly a trans-migration from scenes of bloodletting to moments of
peace and harmony; nonetheless, strange Third World peoples
remain transfixed in the background, waiting for rescue and
redemption. So for the other part of humanity, there is no movement
but simply a varying of intensity of suffering, punctuated by
resigned smiles or bitter tears.
So the beyond is staged here as the realization of hope for
the West. However, what is in it for us who are inhabiting (to use a
clich) the belly of the beast? But let us go back to Vallejo, or to
wherever his imagination has been translocated. Come to think of it,
even the translation of Vallejos line is an escape: there is no pronoun
there. Precisely the absence of the phallus (if we follow our Lacanian
guides) guarantees its infinite circulation as the wandering, nomadic
signifier. Unsettled, traveling, the intractable vagrant. . . .
Lost in the desert or in some wilderness, are we looking for a
city of which we are unacknowledged citizens? Which city, Babylon or
Jerusalem? St. Augustine reminds us: Because of our desire we are
already there, we have already cast our hope like an anchor on these
shores. By the logic of desire, the separation of our souls from our
bodies is finally healed by identification with a figurelike Christ who,
in Pauline theology, symbolizes the transit to liberation from within
the concrete, suffering body. What is foreign or alien becomes
transubstantiated into a world-encompassing Ecclesia, a new polis in
which we, you and I, find ourselves embedded.
___________________________
Stranger no more, I am recognized by others whom I have
yet to identify and know. Instead of Albert Camuss LEtranger
(which in my youth served as a fetish for our bohemian revolt
against the provincial Cold War milieu of the Manila of the 1950s),
Georg Simmels The Stranger has become of late the focus of my
meditation. It is an enigmatic text whose profound implications
cannot really be spelled out in words, only in lived experiences, in
praxis.
Simmel conceives the stranger as the unity of two
opposites: mutating between the liberation from every given point
in space and the conceptual opposite to fixation at such a point,
hence the wanderer defined as the person who comes today and
127
stays tomorrow. Note that the staying is indefinite, almost a

promise, not a certainty. But where is the space of staying, or maybe
of malingering?
Simmels notion of space tries to bridge potentiality and
actuality: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome
the freedom of coming and going. He is fixed within a particular
spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to
spatial boundaries. The wanderer is an outsider, not originally
belonging to this group, importing something into it. Simmels
dialectic of inside/outside spheres is tricky here; it may be an
instance of wanting to have ones cake and also eat it:
The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every
human relation is organized, in the phenomenon of the
stranger, in a way which may be most briefly formulated
by saying that in the relationship to him, distance means
that he, who is close by, is far, and strangeness means
that he, who also is far, is actually near. For, to be a
stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a
specific form of interaction. The inhabitants of Sirius are
not really strangers to us, at least not in any
sociologically relevant sense: they do not exist at all; they
are beyond far and near. The stranger, like the poor and
like sundry inner enemies, is an element of the group
itself. His position as a full-fledged member involves
both being outside it and confronting it.
And so, following this line of speculation, the query Where are you
from? is in effect a token of intimacy. For the element that increases
distance and repels, according to Simmel, is the one that establishes
the pattern of coordination and consistent interaction that is the
foundation of coherent sociality. Neither paradox nor aporia, this
theme needs pursuing up to its logical or illogical end.
Between the essentialist mystique of the Volk/nation and the
libertarian utopia of laissez-faire capitalism, the stranger subsists as
a catalyzing agent of change. In other words, the subversive function
of the stranger inheres in his being a mediator of two or more
worlds. Is this the hybrid and in-between diasporic character of
postcoloniality? Is this the indeterminate species bridging multiple
worlds? Or is it more like the morbid specimens of the twilight
world that Antonio Gramsci, languishing in prison, once alluded to,
creatures caught between the ancien regime slowly dying and a social
order that has not yet fully emerged from the womb of the old?
We are brought back to the milieu of transition, of
vicissitudes, suspended in the proverbial conundrum of the tortoise
overtaking the hare in Zenos paradox. This may be the site where
128
space is transcended by time. The strangers emblematic message

may be what one Black musician has already captured in this
memorable manifesto by Paul Gilroy: It aint where youre from, its
where youre at.
Historically, the stranger in Simmels discourse emerged first
as the trader. When a society needs products from outside its
borders, a middleman is then summoned who will mediate the
exchange. (If a god is needed, as the old adage goes, there will
always be someone to invent him.) Yet what happens when those
products coming from outside its territory begin to be produced
inside, when a middleman role is no longer required, that is, when
the economy is closed, land divided up, and handicraft guilds
formed to insure some kind of autarky? Then the stranger, who is
the supernumerary (Simmel cites European Jews as the classic
example), becomes the settler whose protean talent or sensibility
distinguishes him. This sensibility springs from the habitus (to use
Pierre Bourdieus term) of trading which alone makes possible
unlimited combinations, where intelligence always finds
expansions and new territories, because the trader is not fixed or
tied to a particular location; he doesnt own land or soil or any ideal
point in the social environment. Whence originates his mystery?
From the medium of money, the instrument of exchange:
Restriction to intermediary trade, and often (as though
sublimated from it) to pure finance, gives him the
specific character of mobility. If mobility takes place
within a closed group, it embodies that synthesis of
nearness and distance which constitutes the formal
position of the stranger. For the fundamentally mobile
person comes in contact, at one time or another, with
every individual, but is not organically connected,
through established ties of kinship, locality, and
occupation, with any single one. (Simmel 1950, 509)
From this paradoxical site of intimacy and detachment,
estrangement and communion, is born the quality of objectivity
that allows the fashioning of superior knowledge. This does not
imply passivity or indifference, , Simmel argues: it is a particular
structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and
involvement. For instance, the dominant position of the stranger is
exemplified in the practice of those Italian cities that chose judges
from outside the city because no native was free from entanglement
in family and party interests. Can the court system in the
Philippines ever contemplate this practice, courts that are literally
family sinecures, nests of clan patronage and patriarchal gratuities?
129
Only, I suppose, when there is a threat of interminable feuds, a cycle

of vindictive retribution. Otherwise, legitimacy is always based on
force underwritten by custom, tradition, the inertia of whats
familiar. So strangeness is subversive when it challenges the familiar
and normal, the ineluctable pathos of sameness.
On the other hand, it may also be conservative. The stranger
then, like Prince Myshkin in Dostoevskys The Idiot, becomes the
occasion for a public display of intimacies. He becomes the hieratic
vessel or receiver of confessions performed in public, of confidential
information, secrets, rumors, and others. He is the bearer of guilt and
purgation, the stigmata of communal responsibility and its catharsis.
His objectivity is then a full-blown participation which, obeying its
own laws, thus eliminates Simmel theorizesaccidental
dislocations and emphases, whose individual and subjective
differences would produce different pictures of the same object.
From this standpoint, the prince is a stranger not because he is not
Russian but because he idiotically or naively bares whatever he
thinkshe says it like it is. Which doesnt mean he doesnt hesitate
or entertain reservations, judgments, and so on. Dostoevsky invents
his escape hatch in the princes epileptic seizures that become
symptomatic of the whole societys disintegrated totality.
________________________
We begin to become more acquainted with this stranger as
the spiritual ideal embedded in contingent reality. Part of the
strangers objectivity is his freedom: the objective individual is
bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception,
understanding, and evaluation of the given. Is this possible: a
person without commitments, open to every passing opportunity?
Baruch Spinoza, G. E. Moore, Mikhail Bakhtin are not wanted here.
Ethics be damned.
At this juncture I think Simmel is conjuring up the image of
the value-free sociologist who has completely deceived himself even
of the historical inscription of his discipline, finally succumbing to
the wish-fulfillment of becoming the all-knowing scientist of
historical laws and social processes. Simmel is quick to exonerate the
stranger, the middleman-trader, from charges of being a fifth
columnist, an instigator or provocateur paid by outsiders. On the
other hand, Simmel insists that the stranger is freer, practically and
theoretically; he surveys conditions with less prejudice; his criteria
for them are more general and more objective ideals; he is not tied
down in his action by habit, piety, and precedent. The stranger has
become some kind of omniscient deity, someone like the god of
130
Flaubert and Joyce paring his fingernails behind the clouds while
humanity agonizes down below.
Finally, Simmel points out the abstract nature of the relation
of others to the stranger. This is because one has only certain more
general qualities in common, not organic ties that are empirically
specific to inhabitants sharing a common historical past, culture,
kinship, and others. The humanity that connects stranger and host is
precisely the one that separates, the element that cannot be invoked
to unify the stranger with the group of which he is an integral part.
So nearness and distance coalesce again: To the extent to which the
common features are general, they add, to the warmth of the relation
founded on them, an element of coolness, a feeling of the
contingency of precisely this relationthe connecting forces have
lost their specific and centripetal character.
One may interpose at this point: Why is Simmel formulating
the predicament of the stranger as a paradox that too rapidly
resolves the contradictions inherent in it? The dialectic is shortcircuited, the tension evaporated, by this poetic reflection: The
stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel between him and ourselves
common features of a national, social, occupational, or generally
human, nature. He is far from us, insofar as these common features
extend beyond him or us, and connect us only because they cannot
connect a great many people. What generalizes, estranges; what
binds us together, individualizes each one. A symmetrical truism, or
another liberal platitude?
We witness an immanent dialectical configuration shaping
up here. Every intimate relationship then harbors the seeds of its
own disintegration. The aborigine and the settler are wed in their
contradictions and interdependencies. For what is common to two,
Simmel continues to insist, is never common to them alone but is
subsumed under a general idea which includes much else besides,
many possibilities of commonness. This, I think, applies to any
erotic relationship which, in the beginning, compels the lovers to
make their relationship unique, unrepeatable, even idiosyncratic.
Then estrangement ensues; the feeling of uniqueness is replaced by
skepticism and indifference, by the thought that the lovers are only
instances of a general human destiny. In short, the lovers graduate
into philosophers reflecting on themselves as only one of the infinite
series of lovers in all of history. These possibilities act like a corrosive
agent that destroys nearness, intimacy, communal togetherness:
No matter how little these possibilities become real and
how often we forget them, here and there, nevertheless,
they thrust themselves between like shadows, like a mist
which escapes every word noted, but which must
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coagulate into a solid bodily form before it can be called

jealousy . . . similarity, harmony, and nearness are
accompanied by the feeling that they are not really the
unique property of this particular relationship. They are
something more general, something which potentially
prevails between the partners and an indeterminate
number of others, and therefore gives the relation, which
alone was realized, no inner and exclusive necessity.
(Simmel 1950, 510)
Perhaps in Gunnar Myrdals America, where a
universalistic creed, once apostrophized by that wandering French
philosophe De Tocqueville, prevails, this privileging of the general
and the common obtains. However, this perhaps dissolves because
we see, in the history of the last five decades, that cultural pluralism
is merely the mask of a common culture of market individualism,
of class war inflected into the routine of racial politics. Witness the
victims of the civil rights struggles, the assassination of Black
Panther Party members, lethal violence and psychic injury inflicted
on Vincent Chin, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-jamal, , and so on.
As antidote to the mystification of hybridity and inbetweenness, we need therefore to historicize, to come down to the
ground of economic and political reality. What collectivities of
power/knowledge are intersecting and colliding? In a political
economy where racial differentiation is the fundamental principle of
accumulation, where profit or the private extraction of surplus
value is the generalizing principle, it is difficult to accept Simmels
concept of strangeness as premised on an initial condition of
intimacy and mutual reciprocity in a mythical level playing field.
Simmel is caught in a bind. He says that the Greek attitude to the
barbarians illustrates a mind-frame that denies to the Other
attributes that are specifically human. However, in that case the
barbarians are not strangers; the relation to them is a non-relation.
Whereas the stranger is a member of the group, not an outsider.
Simmel (1964, 405) arrives at this concluding insight:
As a group member, the stranger is near and far at the
same time as is characteristic of relations founded only
on general human commonness. But between nearness
and distance, there arises a specific tension when the
consciousness that only the quite general is common
stresses that which is not common. [Here is the kernel of
Simmels thesis.] In the case of the person who is a
stranger to the country, the city, the race, etc., however,
this non-common element is once more nothing
individual, but merely the strangeness of origin, which is
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or could be common to many strangers. For this reason,

strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as
strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is
no less general in regard to them than the element of
nearness. (51112)
Examples might illuminate these refined distinctions. Simmel
cites the case of the categorization of the Jew in medieval times that
remained permanent despite the changes in the laws of taxation: the
Jew was always taxed as a Jew, his ethnic identity fixed his social
position, whereas the Christian was the bearer of certain objective
contents that changed in accordance with the fluctuation of his
fortune (ownership of property, wealth). If this invariant element
disappeared, then all strangers by virtue of being strangers would
pay an equal head tax. In spite of this, the stranger is an organic
member of the group which dictates the conditions of his
existenceexcept that this membership is precisely different in that
while it shares some similarities with all human relationships, a
special proportion and reciprocal tension produce the particular,
formal relation to the stranger.
An alternative to Simmels hypothesis is the historical case of
Baruch Spinoza, the archetypal exile. A child of the Marrano
community of Jews in Amsterdam, Holland, who were driven from
Portugal and Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Spinoza
was eventually excommunicated and expelled by the elders of the
community. Banned as a heretic, Spinoza became an exile within an
exile. It was, however, a felix culpa since that became the condition
of possibility for the composition of the magnificent Ethics, a space of
redemption in which deus/natura becomes accessible to ordinary
mortals provided they can cultivate a special form of rationality
called scientia intuitiva. The impure blood of this Marrano of
Reason affords a created world of secular reason that, if we so
choose, can become a permanent home for the diasporic intellect.
Unfortunately, except for a handful of recalcitrant spirits, Filipinos
have not yet discovered Spinozas Ethics. I suspect, however, that
Rizal and the Propagandists, Isabelo de Los Reyes, Apolinario
Mabini, S. P. Lopez, and Angel Baking, were not unaware of its
dissemination in the radical anarchist and socialist tradition of the
Enlightenment.
___________________
You will leave everything loved most dearly; / And this is the arrow
That the bow of exile shoots first. . . .
Dante Alighieri
133
So where are we now in mapping this terra incognita of the

nomadic monster, the deviant, the alien, the stranger, the Filipino
subaltern?
We are unquestionably in the borderline, the hymen, the
margin of difference constituted by that simultaneous absence and
presence that Jacques Derrida was the first to theorize in his strategy
of suspicion. It is, one might suggest, an epileptic seizure that is
regularized, as the character of Prince Myshkin (in Fyodor
Dostoevskys The Idiot, 1868) demonstrates. When asked by that
unforgettable mother, Mrs. Yepanchin, what he wrote to her
daughter Aglayaa confession of need of the other person, a
communication of desire for the other to be happy as the gist of the
message, Prince Myshkin replied that when he wrote it, he had
great hopes. He explains: Hopeswell, in short, hopes of the
future and perhaps a feeling of joy that I was not a stranger, not a
foreigner, there. I was suddenly very pleased to be back in my own
country. One sunny morning I took up a pen and wrote a letter to
her. Why to her, I dont know. Sometimes, you know, one feels like
having a friend at ones side.
Dear friend, where are you?
*****
Since we are in the mode of a rectification of names, a
semantic interlude is appropriate here. Just as our current
hermeneutic trend seeks etymologies for traces of the itinerary of
meanings, let us look at what Webster offers us for the word exile:
it means banished or expelled from ones native country or place of
residence by authority, and forbidden to return, either for a limited
time or for life; abandonment of ones country by choice or necessity.
The Exile originally refers to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews
in the sixth century B.C.
The Latin exilium denotes banishment; the Latin exilis denotes
slender, fine, thin; exilition, now obsolete, a sudden springing or
leaping out. This sudden springing or leaping out offers room for
all kinds of speculation on wandering strangers inhabiting
borderlines, boundaries, frontiers, all manner of refusals and
evasions. Yet the movement involved in exile is not accidental or
happenstance; it has a telos underlying it. It implicates wills and
purposes demarcating the beginning and end of movement. As
Spinoza teaches us, everything can be grasped as modalities of rest
and motion, of varying speed. Even here ambiguity pursues us: rest
134
is relative to motion, motion to rest. If everyone is migrating, then

who is the native and who the settler?
Another word should supplement exile, and that word is
migration. The movement from place to place that this word
signifies in one epoch is quite circumscribed: it is the movement
from one region to another with the change in seasons, as many
birds and some fishes follow, for instance, migratory locust,
migratory worker: one who travels from harvest to harvest,
working until each crop is gathered or processed, to wit, the
Filipino Manongs and their Mexican counterparts. The species of
Homo sapiens pursues the line of flight instinctively followed by bird
and fish, but this calibration of the instinct itself is drawn by the
rhythm of the seasons, by Earths ecological mutation. So exile
betrays political will, while migration still obscures or occludes the
play of secular forces by the halo of naturalness, the aura of cosmic
fate and divine decree. The fate of Bulosan and compatriots of the
warm body export trade todayall 10 million bodies, with at least
five of them returning daily at the Ninoy Aquino International
Airport as cadaversoffers the kairos of an exemplum. The
disappeared in the era of martial law has now been replaced by
the returned in the era of transnational corporate globalization.
*****
The life-history of the national hero Jose Rizal offers one
viable paradigm for Filipino intellectuals in self-exile.
When this leading anticolonial propagandist-agitator was
banished to Dapitan, in the southern island of Mindanao, in 1892, he
assured his family that wherever I might go I should always be in
the hands of God who holds in them the destinies of men. Despite
this unabashed deistic faith, Rizal immediately applied himself to
diverse preoccupations: horticulture, eye surgery, collecting
butterflies for study, teaching, civic construction, composing a
multilingual dictionary, and trying out a liaison with an alien
woman, a sweet stranger (dulce extranjera). He also maintained a
voluminous correspondence with scientists and scholars in Europe
and Manila. Even though the Spanish authorities were lenient, Rizal
had no utopian illusions: To live is to be among men, and to be
among men is to struggle. . . . It is a struggle with them but also with
ones self, with their passions, but also with ones own, with errors
and with anxieties.
The anguish of Rizals exile was assuaged somewhat by his
female companion, Josephine Bracken, an Irish Catholic from Hong
Kong. Nevertheless, he could not deny that his being transported to
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Dapitan was demoralizing, unsettling, given the uncertainty of the

future. This is why he seized the opportunity to volunteer his
medical skills to the Spanish army engaged in suppressing the
revolution in Cuba. Amplifying distance and alienation, he could
resign himself to the demands of duty, of the necessity to make
progress through suffering. Fatalism and service to the cause of
humanity coalesced to distinguish the ethos of this deportation at a
time when rumblings of popular discontent had not yet climaxed in
irreversible rupture. When Rizal was executed in December 1896, the
revolution had already exploded, concentrating scattered energies in
the fight against a common enemy, first Spain and then the United
States. Homecoming was near, the return a challenging task or
impending necessity.
*****
In the context of globalized capitalism today, the Filipino
diaspora acquires a distinctive physiognomy and temper. We can
exercise a thought-experiment of syncretism and cross-fertilization.
The Pinoy diaspora is a fusion of exile and migration: the scattering
of a people, not yet a fully synthesized nation, to the ends of the
earth, across the planet throughout the 1960s and 1970s, continuing
up to the present. We are now a quasi-wandering people, pilgrims or
prospectors staking our lives and futures all over the worldin the
Middle East, Africa, Europe, North and South America, in Australia
and all of Asia, in every nook and cranny of this seemingly
godforsaken Earth. Explorers and adventurers all. No one yet has
performed a cognitive mapping of these movements, their
geometry and velocity, across national boundaries, mocking the
carnivalesque borderland hallucinations glorified by postmodernist
academics of color.
Who cares for the Filipino anyway? Not even the Philippine
government and its otiose consulatesunless compelled by massive
demonstrations of anger such as the one that followed the execution
of Flor Contemplacion in Singapore. What can you expect from
parasitic oligarchs and government flunkeys of finance-capital? We
are a nation in search of a national-democratic sovereign state that
will care for the welfare of every citizen, particularly those
historically oppressed (peasants, workers, Moros, women,
indigenous communities, children). When Benigno Aquino was
killed, the slogan the Filipino is worth dying for became
fashionable for a brief interval between the calamity of the Marcos
dictatorship and the mendacity of Corazon Aquinos rule and her
even more bloody unconscionable successors. Yet today Filipinos are
dyingfor what? For the status quo? For more self-sacrifices for
136
parasites? For Bushs obscene war of terror for oil, white

supremacy, and corporate superprofits?
In 1983 alone, there were 300,000 Filipinos in the Middle East
and close to a hundred thousand in Europe. I met hundreds of
Filipinos, men and women, in the city park in Rome, in front of the
train station, during their days off as domestics and semiskilled
workers. I met Filipinos hanging around the post office in Tripoli,
Libya, in 1980. And in trips back and forth Ive met them in London,
Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Taipei, Montreal, and,
of course, everywhere in the United Statesa dispersed nationality,
perhaps a little better than Bulosan and Philip Vera Cruz and his
compatriots during the 1930s and 1940s, field hands and laborers
migrating from harvest to harvest from Hawaii and California
through Oregon to Washington and Alaska. A whole people
dispersed, displaced, dislocated. A woman from Negros watched
her husband flying to Saudi Arabia in 1981: Even the men cry on
leaving and cling to their children at the airport. When the airplane
lifted off, I felt as though my own body was being dislocated. Like
birth pangs, the separation of loved ones generates a new
experience, a nascent structure of feeling, for which we have not
yet discovered the appropriate plots, rhetorical idioms, discursive
registers, and architectonic of representation. Indeed, this latecapitalist diaspora demands a new language and symbolism for
rendition. As picaresque fable? Epic saga? Or as tragic-comic
spectacle?
The cult hero of eclectic postmodernity, Salman Rushdie,
offers us a harvest of ideas on this global phenomenon in his novel,
Shame. The migrant has conquered the force of gravity, Rushdie
writes, the force of belonging; like birds, he has flown. Roots that
have trammeled and tied down have been torn. The conservative
myth of roots (exile, to my mind, is a problem of mapping routes,
not digging for roots or fabricating ethnographic travelogues) and
gravity has been displaced by the reality of flight, for now to fly and
to flee are ways of seeking individual freedoma flight of escape for
more risky engagements and self-testing provocations?
When individuals come unstuck from their native land,
they are called migrants. When nations do the same
thing (Bangladesh), the act is called secession. What is
the best thing about migrant peoples and seceded
nations? I think it is their hopefulness. Look into the eyes
of such folk in old photographs. Hope blazes undimmed
through the fading sepia tints. And whats the worst
thing? It is the emptiness of ones luggage. Im speaking
137
of invisible suitcases, not the physical, perhaps

cardboard, variety containing a few meaning-drained
mementoes: we have come unstuck from more than
land. We have floated upwards from history, from
memory, from Time. (Rushdie 1983, 91)
Rushdie finds himself caught not only in the no-mans-land between
warring territories, but also between different periods of time. He
considers Pakistan a palimpsest souvenir dreamed up by
immigrants in Britain, its history written and rewritten, insufficiently
conjured and extrapolated. Translated into a text, what was once a
homeland becomes a product of the imagination. Every exile or
deracinated subaltern shares Rushdies position, or at least his
invented habits: I, too, like all migrants, am a fantasist. I build
imaginary countries and try to impose them on the ones that exist. I,
too, face the problem of history: what to retain, what to dump, how
to hold on to what memory insists on relinquishing, how to deal
with change. We select the construction materials of our salvaging
vessel from the driftwoods of memory, shipwrecked
souvenirsemergency signals flashing from flotsam and jetsam, the
wreckage of dreams, promises, wagers risked.
And so this is the existential dilemma. For all those forced
out of ones homelandby choice of necessity, it doesnt really make
a differencethe vocation of freedom becomes the act of inventing
the history of ones life, which is equivalent to founding and
inhabiting that terra incognita, which only becomes known, mapped,
named as one creates it partly from memory, partly from dream,
partly from hope. Therefore the stranger is the discoverer of that
region that becomes home in the process the termination of which
coincides with the life of the planet Earth, the stranger dissolving the
estranging homelessness of our galaxy. You, stranger, my friend.
*****
At this crossroad, let us seek pedagogical counsel from the
mentor of the Palestinian diaspora, Edward Said, who has
poignantly described the agon of exile. Said cited the Philippines
colonial dependency in his magisterial study, Culture and Imperialism
(1993). Caught in medias res and deprived of geographical stability or
continuity of events, Said elaborates, the Palestinian narrator of the
diaspora has to negotiate between the twin perils of fetishism and
nostalgia:
Intimate mementoes of a past irrevocably lost circulate
among us, like the genealogies and fables severed from
138
their original locale, the rituals of speech and custom.

Much reproduced, enlarged, thematized, embroidered
and passed around, they are strands in the web of
affiliations we Palestinians use to tie ourselves to our
identity and to each other . . . We endure the difficulties
of dispersion without being forced (or able) to struggle
to change our circumstances. . . . Whatever the claim
may be that we make on the worldand certainly on
ourselves as people who have become restless in the
fixed place to which we have been assignedin fact our
truest reality is expressed in the way we cross over from
one place to another. We are migrants and perhaps
hybrids in, but not of, any situation in which we find
ourselves. This is the deepest continuity of our lives as a
nation in exile and constantly on the move.
Saids hermeneutic strives to decipher the condition of exile as the
struggle to recover integrity and reestablish community not in any
physical location but in the space of cultural production and
exchange. Despite its cogency and the eloquence of its truth-bearing
signs, Saids discourse can only articulate the pathos of a select few,
the elite intelligentsia. Meanwhile, the intifada partisan has indeed
gone beyond the irony of Saids humanism and the hubris of
Derridas difference to challenge US-supported Zionist occupation.
****
****
****
We Filipinos need a cartography and a geopolitical project

for the masses in diaspora, not for the elite in exile. Many of our
fellow expatriates, however, are obsessed with beginnings.
Speaking of who arrived here first on this continent, our
born-again compatriots are celebrating the first men from the
archipelago who landed one foggy morning of 21 October 1587, at
Morro Bay, California. These sailors from the Spanish galleon
Nuestra Seora de Buena Esperanza were colonial subjects, not
Filipinos. Filipino is the term that in those days only referred to
Spaniards born in the Philippines (in contrast to the Peninsulares,
those born in the European metropolis). But no matter, the name has
become symbolic of the renewed search for identity. Any relic seems
useful.
Such roots seem to assimilated Fil-Americans a
prerequisite for claiming an original,authentic identity as a singular
people. After all, how can the organic community grow and multiply
without such attachments? Margie Talaugon of the Filipino
139
American Historical National Society points to Morro Bay as the

spot where Filipino American history started (Sacramento Bee, 19
May 1996). If so, then it started with the Spaniards expropriating the
land of the Indians for the Cross and the Spanish Crown. Do we
want to be part of the gang of bloody conquistadors (whether
Spanish, French, or Anglo-Saxon Puritans) guilty of the genocide of
Native Americans?
Under the command of Pedro de Unamuno, a few Luzon
Indians acting as scouts (because of their color) accompanied the
exploring party into the California interior. Lo and behold, they were
ambushed by the natives who failed to correctly interpret their
offerings. In the skirmish born of misrecognition, one Filipino lost
his life and Unamuno withdrew. Other expeditions followedall for
the purpose of finding out possible ports along the California coast
where galleons sailing from Manila to Acapulco could seek refuge in
case of attack from pirates. When the Franciscan missionaries joined
the troops from Mexico, mandated to establish missions from San
Diego to Monterey that would serve as way stations for the Manila
galleons, Filipinos accompanied them as menials in colonizing
Indian territory in what is now the state of California. Do we need to
cherish this memorial of complicity with blood-thirsty conquest?
*****
Anxiety underlying the claim to be first in setting foot on the
North American continent also accounts for the revival of interest in
the fabled Manillamen. The rubric designates the Malay subjects
of the archipelago who allegedly jumped ship off Spanish galleons
and found their way into the bayous of Louisiana as early as 1765. In
contrast to the early Luzon Indians, these were rebels protesting
the brutal conditions of indenture; they were not knowing
accomplices or accessories to colonial rampage. There is even a
rumor that they signed up with the French buccaneer Jean Baptiste
Lafitte; if true, they then took part in the Battle of New Orleans
during the war of 1812. These fugitives settled in several villages
outside New Orleans, in Manila Village on Barataria Bay. They
engaged chiefly in shrimp-fishing and hunting.
The most well-known settlement (ca. 1825) was St. Malo that
was destroyed by a hurricane in 1915. The Filipino swamp settlers of
St. Malo were memorialized by one of the first Orientalists,
Lafcadio Hearn, whose life-configuration appears as rhizomatic as
the transplanted Malays he sought to romanticize. Hearn loved all
things Japanese, and all things that can be exoticized. Here is an
excerpt from his article, Saint Malo: A Lacustrine Village in
Louisiana (Harpers Weekly, 31 Mar. 1883):
140
For nearly fifty years, there has existed in the southern

swamplands of Louisiana a certain strange settlement of
Malay fishermenTagalas from the Philippine Islands.
The place of their lacustrine village is not precisely
mentioned upon maps, and the world in general ignored
until a few days ago the bare fact of their amphibious
existence. Even the United States mail service has never
found its way thither, and even the great city of New
Orleans, less than a hundred miles distant, the people
were far better informed about the Carboniferous Era
than concerning the swampy affairs of the Manila
village. . . .
Out of the shuddering reeds and grass on either
side rise the fantastic houses of the Malay fishermen,
poised upon slender support above the marsh, like
cranes watching for scaly prey. . . . There is no woman in
the settlement, nor has the treble of a female voice been
heard along the bayou for many a long year. . . . How,
then, comes it that in spite of the connection with
civilized life, the Malay settlement of Lake Borgne has
been so long unknown? Perhaps because of the natural
reticence of the people.
What is curious is that Hearn, in another take of this landscape (in
Times-Democrat, 18 Mar. 1883), shifts our attention to the mood and
atmosphere of the place in order to foreground his verbal artistry.
The need to know these strange swamp dwellers is now subsumed
into the program of a self-indulgent aestheticizing drive; the will to
defamiliarize turns the inhabitants, the outlandish colony of
Orientals, into performers of fin-de-sicle decadence. Voyeurism
feeds on invidious contrasts and innuendoes that recall Baudelaires
posture of worldly ennui:
Louisiana is full of mysteries and surprises. Within fifty
miles of this huge city, in a bee line southwest, lies a
place as wild and weird as the most fervent seekers after
the curious could wish to beholda lake village
constructed in true Oriental style, and equally worthy of
prehistoric Switzerland or modern Malacca. . . . The like
isolation of our Malay settlement is due to natural causes
alone, but of a stranger sort. It is situated in a peculiarly
chaotic part of the world, where definition between earth
and water ceasesan amphibious land full of quiverings
and quagmires, suited rather to reptile life than to
human existencea region wan and doubtful and
141
mutable as that described in The Passing of Arthur,

where fragments of forgotten peoples dwell . . . a coast of
ever shifting sand, and, far away, the phantom circle of a
moaning sea.
. . . Nature, by day, seems to be afraid to speak in
a loud voice there; she whispers only. And the brown
Malaysforever face to face with her solitudealso talk
in low tones as through sympathytones taught by the
lapping of sluggish waters, the whispering of grasses,
the murmuring of the vast marsh. Unless an alligator
shows his headthen it is a shout of Miro! cuidado!
Since the voices captured were conversing in Spanish, we
know that these brown settlers have been Hispanicized and
estranged from their original surroundings. But never mind: the
sounds blend with the other creatures of the bayous, a cacophony of
organic life orchestrated by Hearns precious craft. St. Malos
miasma is domesticated for the elegant French salons of New
Orleans and the adjoining plantations. Unlike the foggy, damp, and
rainy Siberia of Chekhovs story In Exile (written in 1892), which
becomes the site of epiphanic disclosures and cathartic confessions,
Hearns theater affords no such possibility. Old Semyon, Chekhovs
choric observer, can demonstrate his toughness and fortitude all at
once in the face of Czarist inhumanity: Even in Siberia people can
livecan li-ive!
The repressed always returns, but in serendipitous disguise.
Hearn would be surprised to learn that St. Malos descendants, now
in their eighth generation, are alive and well, telling their stories,
musing: Well, if we dont know where we come from, how do we
know where we are going? The indefatigable filmmaker Renee
Tajima interviewed the Burtanog sisters in New Orleans and notes
that there are no mahjongg games and trans-Pacific memories here
in the Burtanog household. The defining cultural equation is fivecard Stud and six-pack of Bud (Lite). The talk is of former husbands,
voodoo curses, and the complicated racial design of New Orleans
society.
Out of the mists exuding from Hearns prose, the Burtanog
sisters speak about antimiscegenation and Jim Crow laws, the
hierarchical ranking and crossing-over of the races in Louisiana.
However, in conformity with the Southern ethos, they consider
themselves White. These exuberant women certainly do not
belong to Bienvenido Santoss tribe of lovely peoplea
patronizing epithetwhose consolation is that they (like artists)
presumably have ready and immediate access to the eternal verities.
142
No such luck. Not even for internal exiles like Mikhail Bakhtin, Ann
Akhmatova, Ding Ling, or for beautiful souls like Jose Garcia Villa
and their epigones in the miasmic salons of the Empire.
*****
Why this obsessive quest for who came first? Is precedence a
claim to authenticity and autochthonous originality? What if we
came last, not fresh off the boats, clinging to the anchors or even
floating on driftwood? Does this entitle us less to citizenship or the
right to inhabit our constructed place here? Who owns this land, this
continent, anyway? Werent the American Indians the stewards of
communal land before the cartographer Amerigo Vespucci was
recast as the name-giver to a whole continent?
In his semantic genealogy, Raymond Williams (in Keywords,
1983) traces the etymology of native to the Latin nasci (to be born);
nativus means innate, natural; hence, nave as artless and simple.
After the period of conquest and domination, native became
equivalent to bondman, or villein, born in bondage. This
negative agethe ascription of inferiority to locals, to nonEuropeansexisted alongside the positive age when applied to
ones own place or person. Williams (1983, 215) observes further:
Indigenous has served both as a euphemism and as a more
neutral term. In English it is more difficult to use in the sense
which converts all others to inferiors (to go indigenous is
obviously less plausible than to go native). In French,
however, indigenes went through the same development as
English natives, and is now often replaced by autochtones
[sic].
We may therefore be truly naifs if we ignore the advent of
United States power in Manila Bay (not Morro Bay) in 1898. This is
the inaugural event that started the process of deracination, the
primordial event that unfolded in the emergence of the class of
pensionados and the recruits of the Hawaiian Sugar Plantation up to
the brain drain of the 1970s, the political opportunists who sought
asylum during the Marcos dictatorship, and the present influx of this
branch of the Filipino diaspora. To shift to the romance of the
Spanish galleons is to repress this birth of the Filipino in the womb
of the imperial body, a birth whichto invoke the terms in which
Petrarch conceived his exile as the physical separation from the
mothers bodyimplies liberation. This is probably why Jose Marti,
the revolutionary Cuban who lived in exile in the United States
143
while Spain tyrannized over his Motherland, spoke of living in the

belly of the beast.
Here the metaphor becomes fertile for all kinds of
movements, of embarkations and departures. For Petrarch, exile
served as the fantasy of discontinuity that allowed the poet immense
relief from the tremendous anxiety he felt because of his
belatedness, his advent after the decline of classic Roman
civilization. Petrarch was wounded by his Greek precursors; he
resolved to heal the wound by conceiving the act of writing as a
process of digestion, of engulfing, regurgitating, and absorption. We
find analogous strategies of sublimation in Virgil, Dante, Gramsci in
his Prison Notebooks, and so on. This displacement of the original
trauma, which assumed earlier Gnostic resonance as the
imprisonment of the soul within the body, may perhaps explain the
preponderance of oral and gustatory images, eating and digesting
activities, in the fiction of Jessica Hagedorn, R. Zamora Linmark, and
others.
Are Filipinos condemned to this fantasy of cannibalism as a
means of compensation for the loss of the mother? Are we in
perpetual mourning, unable to eject the lost beloved that is still
embedded in the psyche and forever memorialized there? Are we,
Filipinos scattered throughout the planet, bound to the curse of a
repetition compulsion, worshipping fetishes (like aging veterans of
some forgotten or mythical battle) that forever remind us of the
absent, forgotten, and unrecuperated Others?
That is perhaps the permanent stance of the exile, the act of
desiring what is neither here nor there. This paradigm is exemplified
in the last speech of Richard Rowan, the writer-hero of James Joyces
Exiles (1983, 112), addressing not only Bertha but also someone else,
an absent person:
I have wounded my soul for youa deep wound of doubt
which can never be healed. I can never know, never in this
world. I do not wish to know or to believe. I do not care. It is
not in the darkness of belief that I desire you. But in restless
living wounding doubt. To hold you by no bonds, even of
love, to be united with you in body and soul in utter
nakednessfor this I longed.
The quest for the mother as the cure for jealousy, for the illness
accompanying the discovery that one cannot completely possess the
body of the loved one (the mother-surrogate), is given an ironic twist
by Joyces meditation on womens liberation in his notes to Exiles:
It is a fact that for nearly two thousand years the women of
Christendom have prayed to and kissed the naked image of
144
one who had neither wife nor mistress nor sister and would
scarcely have been associated with his mother had it not been
that the Italian church discovered, with its infallible practical
instinct, the rich possibilities of the figure of the Madonna.
(12021)
I recall somewhere that photo or drawing of Rizals mother,
Teodora Alonzo, contemplating the urn containing the remains of
her son. This pieta attitude symbolizes the longed-for fulfillment of
the exiles wish to return to the homelands bosom, the completion
of his earthly journey.
*****
Come now, are we serious in all these melancholy
reflections? Was Jose Rizal indulging in this when, in exile at
Dapitan, he was preoccupied not just with Josephine Bracken but
with a thousand projects of cultivation, teaching, polemical
arguments with his Jesuit mentors, correspondence with scholars in
Europe, ophthalmological practice, and so on? What do I have to do
with thee, woman? Or Isabelo de los Reyesour own socialist
forebearhurled not into the Heideggerian banality of our
quotidian world but into the dark dungeon of Montjuich prison near
Barcelona for his subversive connections: was he troubled by porous
and shifting boundaries? And that perchance he was not really
inside but outside, something like the in-between hybrid of
postcolonial orthodoxy? Indeed, one may ask: for General Artemio
Ricarte, self-exiled in Japan after the victory of the Yankee invaders,
is imagining the lost nation a labor of mourning, too?
Let us leave this topos of Freudian melancholia and ground
our speculations on actual circumstances. Such postmodern
quandaries concerning the modalities of displacement of time by
space, of essences by contingencies, could not have cajoled the
tempered will of Apolinario Mabini into acquiescence. A brilliant
adviser to General Emilio Aguinaldo, president of the first
Philippine Republic, the captured Mabini refused to swear allegiance
to the sovereign power of the United States. This sublime paralytic
conceived deportation as a crucible of his insurrectionary soul.
Intransigent, he preferred the challenge of physical removal to Guam
where he was incarcerated for two years.
Imagine the paralyzed Mabini being carried in a hammock
along the shores of Guam at the threshold of the storm-wracked
twentieth century. Scouring the horizon for a glimpse of his beloved
las islas Filipinas across the Pacific Ocean, Mabini must have felt that
we needed to bide our time because surrender/defeat was not a
145
compromise but a strategy of waiting for the next opportunity. He

envisioned a long march, a protracted journey, toward
emancipation. One can only surmise that Mabinis shrewd and
proud spirit was able to endure the pain of banishment because he
was, by forging in his mind the conscience of his race, writing his
memoirs of the revolution, his wit and cunning deployed to bridge
the distance between that melancholy island and the other
godforsaken islands he was not really able to leave. Who cares now
for Mabini? Or for Macario Sakay and the countless brigands
whom the US hanged for sedition?
At this point in our journey, we cant stop to savor the
pleasure of nostalgia. We are on the way homeTomorrow,
Manila!
_____________________
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we
remembered Zion. . . .
How shall we sing the Lords song in a strange land?
Psalm 137
Exile then is a ruse, a subterfuge of the temporarily weak

subaltern against the master. It is a problem of deploying time
against spacethe classic guerilla stratagem against superior
firepower. It is the cunning of conviction, of hope.
We thus have a replay of Hegels choreography of master
and slave in a new context. Long before Foucault and Michel de
Certeau came around to theorize the performance of everyday
resistance, Bertolt Brecht had already explored in his Lehrstucke the
theme of Schweikian evasions and underminings. The moment of
suspended regularity, the interruption of the normal and habitual,
becomes the occasion to vindicate the sacrifices of all those who have
been forgotten, invisible, silenced. In Peter Weisss play Trotsky in
Exile (1973, 156), in the scene before his execution, Trotsky expresses
this hope amid setbacks, defeats, and losses of all kinds:
I cant stop believing in reason, in human solidarity. . . .
Failures and disappointments cant stop me from seeing
beyond the present defeat to a rising of the oppressed
everywhere. This is no Utopian prophecy. It is the sober
prediction of a dialectical materialist. I have never lost my
faith in the revolutionary power of the masses. But we must
146
be prepared for a long fight. For years, maybe decades, of

revolts, civil wars, new revolts, new wars.
In times of emergency, Trotskys strategic stance of waitingin-exile proves to be the time of pregnancy, of gestation and the
emergence of new things.
Apart from being a symptom of defeat, exile then can also
serve as a weapon of resistance. After the Jewish diaspora in the
sixth century B.C., the captivity in Babylon, and the centuries of
imperial devastation, now we have the situation of the Palestinians,
deprived of their native habitat, finally on the way, in transit, towe
dont know yet. A nation-state: is that the harbor, the terminal, of the
passage from darkness to light? Unless the transnational bourgeoisie
conspire together in this post-Cold War era of intercapitalist rivalry,
I hazard that after so much sacrifices the new social formation will
not be a simple mimicry of the bourgeois nation-state. Let us hope
so.
For so many years after World War II, the Palestinians were
the wandering Jews, also known as terrorists by their enemies.
One of the most eloquent poets of this diaspora, Fawaz Turki,
described how Palestinians in exile attest to the transcendence . . . in
the banal, how they agonized over who is really in exile:/they or
their homeland,/who left who/who will come back to the/other
first/where will they meet. Exiles are like lovers then who yearn
not for homecoming but for a meeting, another tryst, the longawaited encounter and reunion. At first, the land was the loved one;
later on, the land would metamorphose into events, places,
encounters, defeats, and victories. And it is still being transfigured,
undergoing transmutations.
For Edward Said, however, exile is the space of the
extraterritorial where the Baudelairean streetwalker of modernity
finally arrives. Said celebrates exile with a vengeance. In After the
Last Sky, he recognizes the pain, bitter sorrow, and despair but also
the unsettling and decentering force of the exiles plight, its
revolutionary potential. Even though Said (2000, 166) believes that
the pathos of exile is in the loss of contact with the solidity and the
satisfaction of Earth: homecoming is out of the question, he seems
to counterpoint to it a Gnostic, even neo-Platonic, response by
invoking Hugh of St. Victor, a twelfth-century monk from Saxony:
It is, therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced
mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible
and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to
147
leave them behind altogether. The person who finds his

homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom
every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is
perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place.
The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the
world; the strong person has extended his love to all
places; the perfect man has extinguished his.
On second thought, this asceticism may be culture-bound, or
it may be peculiar to a continental mentality overshadowed by
surrounding mountains. Like our brothers in the Caribbean, we
Filipinos are archipelagic creatures trained to navigate treacherous
waters and irregular shoals. Our epistemic loyalty is to islands with
their distinctive auras, vibrations, trajectories, fault lines. John
Fowles (19 , 36) is one of the few shrewd minds who can discern the
difference between the continental and the archipelagic sensorium:
Island communities are the original alternative societies. That
is why so many islanders envy them. Of their nature they
break down the multiple alienations of industrial and
suburban man. Some vision of Utopian belonging, of social
blessedness, of an independence based on cooperation,
haunts them all.
Islands signify our solidarity, even in this time of fragmentation and
ceaseless transversality.
With this Utopian motif, we may recall Shevek, in Ursula Le
Guins The Dispossessed, for whom exile is the symbol for inhabiting
an unfinished, incomplete world. It is a site where fulfillment
(happiness, reunion, homecoming) is forever postponed. This
sustained deferral is what exile means: There was process: process
was all. You could go in a promising direction or you could go
wrong, but you did not set out with the expectation of ever stopping
anywhere.
Meanwhile, consider the fate of partisans of the South
African struggle now allowed re-entry into their homeland. Exile for
them always entailed a return to a national space to exercise the
rights of reclamation and restitution. Yet when the rendezvous of
victory arrived in 1992, we find translated persons and partisans
of metissage at the entry points. Commenting on Bessie Heads
achievement, Rob Nixon considers the exiles as an invaluable asset
for the construction of a new South Africa: Re-entering exiles
should thus be recognized as cross-border creations, incurable
cultural misfits who can be claimed as a resource, rather than
spurned as alien, suspect, or irrelevant.
148
Toward the predicament of uprooting, one can assume

polarized stances. One is the sentimental kind expressed poignantly
by Bienvenido Santos (1982, 11):
All exiles want to go home. Although many of them never
return, in their imagination they make their journey a
thousand times, taking the slowest boats because in their
dream world time is not as urgent as actual time passing,
quicker than arrows, kneading on their flesh, crying on their
bones.
The antithesis to that is the understated, self-estranged gesture of
Bertolt Brecht. Driven from Europe by Hitlers storm-troopers, the
path-breaking dramatist found himself a refugee, neither an
expatriate nomad nor border-crossing immigrant. Crossing the
Japanese Sea, he watched the grayish bodies of dolphins in the
gaiety of dawn. In Landscape of Exile, Brecht cast himself in the
role of the fugitive who beheld with joy . . . the little horsecarts with
gilt decorations / and the pink sleeves of the matrons / in the alleys
of doomed Manila. His visit to the Philippines was short-lived, like
those of Hemingway and Faulkner in the years of the Cold War.
Situated on the edge of disaster, Brecht discovered that the oil
derricks, the thirsty gardens of Los Angeles, the ravines and fruit
market of California did not leave the messenger of misfortune
unmoved. By analogy, were the Pinoys/Pinays at the turn of the
century messengers of a messianic faith, underwriting visions of
apocalypse long before Brecht sighted the coast of the North
American continent?
* * * *****
Adios, dulce extranjera, mi amiga, mi alegria.
--Jose Rizal, Mi Ultimo Adios
From these excursions into delinquent and wayward paths,

we return to the idea of transit, passage, a movement of
reconnaissance in search of a home everywhere. And this
everywhere points, and directs us, to wherever materials are
available for building a shelter for work and community. This may
be the ultimate philosophical mission in our time whose most
provocative prophet is John Berger. Bergers meditations on home,
migration, and exile in And our faces, my heart, brief as photos deserve
careful pondering. By way of provisional conclusion to these notes, I
want to interpolate here a few of his insights into the complex
phenomenology of exile.
149
You can never go home again, Thomas Wolfe counseled us.

But what do you mean by home? we respond. Berger speculates on
what happens after the loss of home when the migrant leaves, when
the continuity with the ancestral dead is broken. The first substitute
for the lost, mourned object (kin, home) is passionate erotic love that
transcends history. Romantic love unites two displaced persons,
linking beginnings and origins, because it pre-dates experience and
allows memory and imagination free play. Such passion inspired the
project of completing what was incomplete, of healing the division
of the sexesa substitute for homecoming. However, romantic love,
like religion and the sacramental instinct, has suffered
transmogrification in the modern world of secular rationality. It has
been displaced by commodity-fetishism, the cash-nexus, and the cult
of simulacra and spectacles. Berger (1984, 67) then expounds on the
other alternative historical hope of completion:
Every migrant knows in his heart of hearts that it is
impossible to return. Even if he is physically able to
return, he does not truly return, because he himself has
been so deeply changed by his emigration. It is equally
impossible to return to that historical state in which
every village was the center of the world. One hope of
recreating a center is now to make it the entire earth.
Only world-wide solidarity can transcend modern
homelessness. Fraternity is too easy a term; forgetting
Cain and Abel, it somehow promises that all problems
can be soluble. In reality many are insolublehence the
never-ending need for solidarity.
Today, as soon as very early childhood is over,
the house can never again be home, as it was in other
epochs. This century, for all its wealth and with all its
communication systems, is the century of banishment.
Eventually perhaps the promise, of which Marx was the
great prophet, will be fulfilled, and then the substitute
for the shelter of a home will not just be our personal
names, but our collective conscious presence in history,
and we will live again at the heart of the real. Despite
everything, I can imagine it.
Meanwhile, we live not just our own lives but
the longings of our century.
Revolution, then, is the way out through the stagnant
repetition of suffering and deprivation in the commodified business
150
of everyday life. It is Walter Benjamins Jetzt-Zeit, Now-Time, that

will blast the continuum of reified history. It is an ever-present
apocalypse whose presiding spirit in the past, Joachim da Fiore,
finds many incarnations in the present: for one, the Filipino overseas
contract worker and his unpredictable, unlicensed peregrinations.
Meanwhile look, stranger, on this planet Earth belonging to
no single individual, our mother whom no one possesses. We find
solidarity with indigenous peoples an inexhaustible source of
comfort, inspiration, and creative renewal. The aboriginal Indians,
dispossessed of their homelands and victimized by those
merchantsagents of Faust and Mephistophelesobsessed by
private ownership and solitary hedonism, express for us also what I
think can be the only ultimate resolution for human exile and
diaspora for Filipinos as well as for other peoples: We and the
earth, our mother, are of one mind.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 2005. Under three flags. London: Verso.
Balagtas, Francisco. 1978. Florante at Laura. Trans. E. San Juan Jr. Manila: Art
Multiples.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1996. From pilgrim to touristor a short story of
identity. In Questions of cultural identity, ed. Stuart Hill and Paul Du
Gay. London: Sage.
Berger, John. 1984. And our face, my heart, brief as photos. New York:
Pantheon.
Brecht, Bertolt. 1976. Poems 19131936. Ed. John. Willett and Ralph
Mannheim. New York: Methuen.
Buci-Glucksman, Christine. 1994. Baroque reason [La raison baroque]. London:
Sage.
Chekhov, Anton. 1979. Anton Checkovs short stories. New York: Norton.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1971. The idiot. Middlesex, UK: Penguin.
Fowles, John. 1978. Islands. Boston: Little Brown Inc.
Guerrero, Leon Maria. 1969. The first Filipino: A biography of Jose Rizal.
Manila: National Historical Commission.
Hearn, Lafcadio. 1883. Saint Malo: A Lacustrine village in Louisiana.
Harpers Weekly, 31 Mar., 14652.
Joyce, James. 1951 [1918]. Exiles. New York: The Viking Press.
Maurer, Armand. 1962. Saint Augustine. In Medieval philosophy. New York:
151
Random House.
Myrdal, Gunnar. 1974. An American dilemma. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Rizal, Jose. 1961. Cartas entre Rizal y sus colegas de la propaganda. Manila: Jose
Rizal Centennial Commission.
Rushdie, Salman. 1983. Shame. New York: Vintage.
Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and imperialism. New York: Alfred Knopf.
. 2000. Reflections in exile and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Santos, Bienvenido. 1982. Words from a writer in exile. In Asian writers on
literature and justice, ed. Leopoldo Yabes. Manila: Philippine Center
of International P.E.N.
San Juan, E. 1998. From exile to diaspora. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Simmel, Georg. 1950. The stranger. In The sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. Kurt
H. Wolff. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Vallejo, Cesar. 1976. Selected poems. New York: Penguin.
Weiss, Peter. 1973. Trotsky in exile. New York: Pocket Books.
Williams, Raymond. 1983. Keywords. New York: Oxford University Press.
______________________________
152
PURO SALITA, KULANG SA GAWA?

_______________________________________________________
(Isang Pagsubok sa Diyalektika ng Kritika ng Sandata at
Sandata ng Kritika, ayon kay Karl Marx)
[Handog kay Karolina]
Pambihira ka
Matatag matingkad mabagsik ang luntiang apoy sa iyong mga mata
Habang dumarampi ang hamog ng umaga
Sa iyong pisnging hinog sa pangarap ng dinukot at ibinilanggong
kinabukasan
Nagliliyab ang iyong tapang, nakapapaso ang dingas ng iyong
determinasyon
Nabighani sa alindog ng iyong dangal habang lugmok sa panaginip
Nangahas ang kaluluwang lumantad madarang, nahimok ng kung
anong bagwis
Ng tukso sa bulong ng iyong labit galaw, tuloy naligaw sa
paglalakbay
Walang sindak mong binalangkas ang ordeng mapanganib at
binungkal ang landas
Namumukod sa madla, buntalang motor/dinamo ng bukangliwayway-Kahit sumabog ang pulbura sa mundong binagtas ng iyong budhi,
wala kang takot
153
Hawak ang sulo ng katarungan, sumusugod ka

Siklab ng huling paghuhukom, O armadong anghel
bumabangon sa iyong bisig at kamao ang mga biktima ng
imperyalismo
Upang bawat nilalang ay magkaroon ng pambihirang katangian
tulad mo
Upang maging pangkaraniwan ang iyong pambihirang giting at
kariktan
O Paraluman ng pag-asat pagnanais,
sisikapin kong ipagbunyi
ang dahas ng iyong kabayanihan
Ang binhing inihasik ng talim ng iyong pagpapasiya
Bagamat baliw akong nakasubsob sa hiwaga ng guniguning
masalimuot,
pinagtatalik ang nitroglycerine ng pagnanasa at titis ng tadhana-Walang makapipigil sa iyo, matatag at mabagsik,
luntiang apoy ng
himagsik kayumanggi,
humahagibis ang katawan mong lumalagablab
yakap ang bulalakaw ng pagkakapantay-pantay
at yapos ng sanghaya
ng pambansang kasarinlan.
154
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
An internationally renowned literary and cultural critic,

E. SAN JUAN, Jr. directs the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in
Connecticut, USA. He received his degrees from the University of the
Philippines and Harvard University. He taught in various universities,
among them the University of California, Davis; Brooklyn College of the
City University of New York; Washington State University; and the
University of Connecticut. He was previously a fellow at the Center for
the Humanities, Wesleyan University; Fulbright professor of American
Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; visiting
professor of literature at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) and at
the University of Trento ( Italy); and recently a fellow at the Rockefeller
Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. Among his recent books are
Racism and Cultural Studies (Duke), Working Through the Contradictions
(Bucknell), Filipinos Everywhere (IBON), In the Wake of Terror: Class,
Race, Nation, Ethnicity in the Postmodern World (Lexington) and US
Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan).
Forthcoming are Balik-bayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader (Ateneo
University Press) and From Globalization to National Liberation
(University of the Philippines Press). San Juan is a member of PEN
American Center and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy
and Socialism. He is in the editorial board of Atlantic Studies, Nature
Society and Thought, Left Curve, Cultural Logic, KritikaKultura,
Amerasia, and other international journals.
155
156

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E. SAN JUAN, Jr.

Copyright E. San Juan, Jr. 2007

Tag-sibol sa Den Haag, Nederland, 25 Marso 2007 9

Kalatas Mula sa Anghel ng Anunsiyasyon

Skindiver in an Odd Angle Stance

Biyernes ng Hapon, Oktubre 1, 2005

The Sweetheart of Ludwig von Wittgenstein

Nagsangang Batis sa Pugad ng Iyong Pilik-Mata

Vicissitudes of the Love and Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky

Megamall sa Metro Manila

Romance of the Bourgeois Poet

Siyam na Awit ng Pag-ibig at Isang Interbensiyong Dalit

Labintatlong Pagsubok sa Pagtuklas ng Anino ng Kagandahan

Cadenza to Three Fabulous Sisters

Dialogue in the Dark

Even as far as Ashley, North Dakota, Where You Were Born

The Lovers Address 111

Only A Moment Ago

The Dandys Smile from the Boogie-Woogie Planetarium

Adios, Mariquita Linda 119

SA LOOB AT LABAS NG BAYAN KONG SAWI: Emergency

About the Author

And seeds flower sibylwise to wake the sleeping

Losgelst von allem trgt mich die mchtige Welle.

TAG-SIBOL SA DEN HAAG, NEDERLAND, 25

Tumatagos sa buhok mo ang silahis, tumatalab sa pilat

[Amsterdam, Nederland, 3/26/2007

SPRING IN DEN HAAG, NEDERLAND,

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS

What death would you desire?

But here on this steadfast ground

and you who dance like a scented sylph

LES TROIS TENTATIONS

Quelle mort dsireriez-vous?

Et vous qui dansent comme un sylphide parfum

(Translated from the original English text)

Lumipad ka na patungong Sydney at Taipeh

Tapos na ang pagsisisit

Youve flown to Riyadh and Qatar

plunged into the foreigners trap

what tame hope has been driven wild

Youve flown to Chicago and San Francisco

Wings broken feathers smoking floating petals of stars gutted

offering the edge of liberty

Youve flown, O beloved sweetheart, but on whose bosom

So distant now is the ship sailing toward Hong

Kong and Singapore

Youre lateyour promises rotting with anxiety and doubts.

(Translated from the original Filipino)

Du bist schon nach Rom und London geflogen

Du bist schon nach Riad und Katar geflogen

Du bist schon nach Toronto und New York geflogen

Du bist schon nach Chicago und San Francisco geflogen

Du bist schon nach Hongkong und Tokio geflogen

Du bist schon nach Sydney und Taipeh geflogen

Wala akong kaakuhan; akoy iyan

MASK OF THE POET

MASKEN DES DICHTERS

KALATAS MULA SA ANGHEL NG

( walang anu-anoy nasaling ng kung anong bagwis

kapagkuway nakuhang tumabi sa matimtimang kaulayaw at

Mahal, hindi ko malaman kung naibahagi ko na sa iyo ito:

Aywan ko kung nagkahulihan tayo at napunan ang pagkukulang

BOTSCHAFT VOM ENGEL DER