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Park Bench in Lingayen

                            Here on the promenade 

It asserts its own insignificance which I 

In turn negate with my memory of other 

Such benches from my childhood, in books 

Or movies, under a trellis weighed by 

Bougainvillea, the purple blooms of banaba,

Or the white weightless feather

Of Forrest Gump. 

                            By its own plainness

It speaks its language of contrasts

Though I cling to my own fancy 

About the recovery or realization of our 

Lost or absent Selves: 

                                    We try to carve

Ourselves from air, as we can hammer 

Tin curlicues of sarimanok and mount it 

On a jeepney hood, or forge realistic-looking

Swords for a throne in fantasy television, or sculpt 

A cherub or the face of Christ from a bole 

Snapped by typhoon. 

                                    It is with these reveries 

I comfort myself trying to wring awe or speech

From an empty park bench. 

Or looking up at the Capitol edifices, 

Marvel at our skill in restoring

Glory from colonial ruin.

                    It is with these 

                                           Idle

Aching dreams 

I linger 

            In a shady

                            Boulevard island 

In Lingayen.

 

 

 

Marne Kilates          

August 6, 2015

(the Boulevard Mall)

 

 

Outside the halls and colonnades 

That would awe tourist or clerk 

And remind me of the meaning of “august,”

I come to this park bench on the boulevard

Radiating from the Capitol Park in Lingayen. 

Classic in its own way—wood planks 

Fastened on concrete uprights like bookends—

The bench casts its elongated shadow 

On the cobbled walk in the early morning. 

                                     Nothing extraordinary

About it, no ornate braids of foliage 

Like those festooning the cornices and

Friezes of the newly-restored zarzuela theater 

Of Sison Hall, or the American neo-classical 

Colonnade of the Capitol, 

                                           (Except perhaps 

The planks’ wood grain), except that it

Restates its own loneliness in the shade

Of anahaw palm, frangipani, yellow bells,

All dripping from the downpour that woke me

At the hotel in the half-dream of the dark

Hour that I remembered vaguely after, 

And whose proof is a shallow puddle 

Shimmering in the distance, where 

This bench’s duplicates negate themselves

In a series hurtling towards a common point 

Of visual absence.

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