Poetry&Stuffby
MARNE KILATES
MARNE
S
KRIPTS
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
Andrade's 'Panguinge'
(The Paseo)
His painter’s hand had nothing to do
With the fate decreed by governor-general
And cabal for preparing the hero’s death.
And decreed by the hero’s hand as well,
As barely a decade before he had been
The man’s jailer—personal custodian
Was the term—at the instance of the friars
At the height of Calamba’s agrarian troubles.
Guard him bodily,
Never let him out of your sight, were
The unspoken instructions, the trouble-maker
With his little Spanish education must not
Stray too far away from where he was held
Incommunicado, his own home.
But he
Found the man special. He was author
And artist, more than he ever thought
Himself to be, indeed a novelist.
They shared so much in common,
Being tocayos firstly, skilled with their
Hands, could write or draw from nature
Or what they had in mind.
This escena
Of the panguinge, for example,
How it delighted him, made him
A little envious of his skills, though his awe
At how he had captured the moment, the details
He chose to depict, the tableau of a local
Card game and social gathering quickly replaced
The fellow artist’s envy with real admiration.
That’s how simple, he seemed.
Though ‘simple’
Was barely the word for the mind that could
Castigate arrogant friars while making fun
Of them, while on the side conceiving
The notion of nascent of nation.
Jose Taviel de Andrade, Panguinge
The orchids,
The flora, and butterflies both of them loved
And talked so much about—as they practiced
Their French and English, as the snickers
And kantiyaw he imagined might be heard
From the card game, and the many miron
In his painting—all never hinted
He’d later choose his younger brother,
Luis, to defend him in his trial.
Oh, it was
A rigged panguinge, of course, in fact
What the natives called a moro-moro,
A story whose ending everyone knew,
But watched unfold anyway on the entablado.
What a waste!
What waste too that his art
About people could be postponed by his parents’
Military ambitions for him, brought him to
Pestilential postings in Africa, and yes,
To inscrutable Asia, and now to these
Docile brown vassals of his own royal bossman
Lolling about in his sofas in the Peninsula.
Well, now,
Good that Luis took to the military life much better
Than he could, but only for him to come this
Special task, again, of jailer—perhaps that first
Time, the man had become his brother
And twin, as he looked back now—personal
Custodian, indeed, to this small and slight
Exemplar of his benighted race,
And only to escort him to his
Doom.
Marne Kilates
5 February 2019
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