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Anima Sola

1

Palm Sunday must just have passed

Or it is Good Friday now, the frond

Above her is only starting to dry.

 

It is the intense noon of three o’clock

After the Siete Palabras, when all

Children are warned not to speak

 

To spare the sleeping God His rest.

She is in a daze. Not that she would need

God’s death to help her slip into a stupor,

 

Or the noon pounding on her head.

Her mind has long been numb

Trying to figure the lines on her palms

 

Or whatever it is that has slipped out

Of her hold. Nothing bothers her. Not

Where she’s going, not where she’s been.

 

 

 

(after the photograph of an old woman

at the door of Paete Church by Jose Y. Dalisay)

2

Even now, as she leans

For support against the wall,

In her green habito of St. Joseph,

Or some old Girl Scout,

 

She is a limp isosceles, her head

Nodding at the vertex, her feet

Slightly apart, drawing the base

That straddles the threshold.

 

Three planes intersect in her:

The void of light outside, God’s quiet

Afternoon of market stalls,

Triangle on floor, powerful medieval door,

 

And perhaps everything that is and is not

Her: the family that lost or abandoned

Her, the country that does not know about

Her, the hands that sewed a nation’s flag

 

That is not about her.

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3

There is no sun or star to mark

The corners of the triangle

 

That forms her

 

No eye of God

Tres personas, solo Dios

 

Nor caliper and rule

to triangulate her location

 

In the scheme of things

 

In the pyramid that has long

pinned her down like a paper weight

 

Acuta

Mactam anima sola

 

No flag or amulet or the flick

Of aspergillum of holy water

 

Can save her

From our eyes that turn away.

 

 

Marne L. Kilates

Feb. 11-March 6, 2008

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