Poetry&Stuffby
MARNE KILATES
MARNE
S
KRIPTS
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
THE LUNA SUITE
"That Luna Woman"
“The effect of this recent huge transaction over a Juan Luna painting is the feeling that the large number of ordinary Filipinos, employees and workers, are always being passed by.”
—Alice Guillermo
“Was she worth the price?”
—John L. Silva
“…How about the Land Bank of the Philippines buying… Manuel Conde’s Genghis Khan from their European owners? Ah, but this would be further inviting passionate debate on art and legacy, and time is fleeting and life is short for the many who are poor, poor, poor.”
—Tito Genova Valiente
“Beauty unreserved holds down a country’s suffering.”
—Luis Cabalquinto
Did it ever touch her, their fate?
Being subject (or citizen) herself,
Did she share in the guilt?
Do we?—eyes from a different time,
Ourselves unsure of our power,
Our survival in the new free world
That doesn’t acknowledge colonies?
What then will she remind us of?
The false serenity of a time gone past?
The uselessness of Beauty or Art?
The poverty of our souls?
The bankruptcy of the bureaucracy?
Or do we have a choice
To reject or rescue her—
From the parlor of some modern grandee,
From the pretext for some charity—
Or to accept her at last, in awe
Or contempt, in ignorance or
Under sufferance, as part of us?
The auction is open.
November 4, 2003
Supposing the three gentlemen
Were not conspiring to change
Their country’s fate but were only
Engaged in that age-old pastime—
Ogling? Supposing it wasn’t even
The eve of the Revolution but
An evening’s pause before a sortie
Into Paris’ sleazier quarter,
And they found this unescorted
Damsel, perhaps a tad aloof
Or out of character, and they
Were now speculating on a night’s
Possibilities, daring each other
For a free coffee on who
Among them could approach her first?
Supposing they all turned tail
And went home laughing, or got
Cold feet and that was the moment
The painter of the Spoliariumfroze them,
For future consumers of art to feed on?
What would it matter then
To Sotheby’s or Christie’s
Or whoever handled the gavel
If the daubs and pats
Of academic oil didn’t give
A hint of what it all meant?
What substance or accident,
Intrinsic or after the fact,
Lent mystery to the sidelong
Glance, the suppressed snicker,
The audible sigh, the stroking
Of a goatee, the twisting
Of a mustache, the tipping of the brim
Of the stovepipe hat, the ending
Of persiflage, the sudden
Silence as she took her seat…
The tremulous reaching for the vanity
Mirror, the dabbing of powder
(Or rouge) on the pale cheeks,
In desperate retouch, to dissimulate
(Or exaggerate) a blush?
(Hide the consumptive flush?)
What soupçon of meaning,
Or frisson of realization,
What signification, sagacious
Or salacious, banal or sidereal,
Informed that moment
At the close of the century,
In that particular alignment
Of bodies in a café?
What price? Do we bid or bet?
Do we bleed? How nicely.
Fortified by the contemplation
Of suffering, how we stouten
At our capability to articulate
Our concern for victims: Her? Us?
Was she perhaps discarded wife
Of a bureaucrat who’d succumbed
To the fragrance of brown flesh,
Was she in fact Luna’s
Dulce extranjera about to say goodbye?
Was it in her Parisian bosom—pastel
And powdery as in a Renoir
Or a Degas—to harbor empathy or
Contempt for some dirt-poor, dutiful
Anonymous colonial, cowering
In some plantation or boudoir,
In the Indies or Carribean, or some
Remote outpost beyond the ken
Of her geography, like those in some
Archipelago in the Farthest East,
Subjects of a different royalty,
But of the same Indifferent Power?
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