It’s a coming together, this piece

Of visual real estate, the abstract

Of the camera frame claiming

A square of reality, a strip of skin 

Peeled off the stretch of vision:

The lake has sucked up all color,

The bare-backed fishers are about

To retrieve their nets from the corals,

Skimming in their blackened dugouts

And bamboo rafts, the lake gleaming

Under the gray sky. The town has

Nothing to say to them, neither 

Memory nor legend of cruel Doña

Shooing off mendicant who needs

A measly fruit of sampaloc for his

Ailing grandson. The old man

Turns out to be the mountain nymph,

And causes the earth to swallow

The Doña’s mansion, leaving 

A roundish pond in the wake 

Of the cataclysm, and the name 

Sampaloc for the lake, the native term 

For tamarind. In the picture the town 

Turns its back on the lake’s menials, 

As ripples vanish in the dark horizon

Of low gray clouds shrouding

The mountain. And everyone―in shack 

Or mansion, street-bound or ankle-deep 

In water―is completely consumed 

By the daily business of the commonplace.

 

 

Marne Kilates

1 January 2021

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