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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. 

                                                       

PanguingeTavieldeAndrade.jpg

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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