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THE LUNA SUITE

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"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

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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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