Between the balusters of a heavy wooden

Staircase at Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar,

I looked down at a dark hall and its

Floor of terra cotta tiles splashed with

The light outside. The hall was in shadow,

Between adobe walls and under high beams

Laid with the thick planks of the molave  

Floor upstairs. Instantly, even as I admired

The reassembled colonial edifices of Las Casas,

Transported piece by piece from the provinces

And fading rural haciendas where

They had been abandoned or sold and

Grudgingly given up by their penurious

Or migrating owners, and recreated here

In this surreal village by the sea

(Better than the facades of Potemkin),

I was transported back to the baptistry

Of the stone church on the hill of my

Childhood in my hometown.

 

                                                   The circular

And vaulted hall occupied the base

Of the bell tower, and at one corner

Was the rickety old termite-eaten staircase

(No balustrade there) that climbed

To the cimborio that topped the octagonal

Tower. Tiyong Andoy, the campanero and

Sexton, with his balding pate and mestizo

Features, broad shoulders and barrel chest,

In his loose white polo shirt and khaki

Trousers and sandals that made him look

Like the friars he served, always warned us,

Three naughty altar boys at the dead  

Hour before the three o’clock mass,

Not to sneak up the stairs to the bells

Since he will surely hear the stairs complain

And he will always catch us halfway.

But we climbed the stairway to the belfry

Anyway,  knowing he was deep in his

Siesta, and because the wind thrilled us

At that height, and we could giggle

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