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The Bridge at Majayjay

(After the painting Puente de Capricho

at the HOCUS exhibit, the National Museum*)

 

 

When there’s a bridge, there’s a church

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Take, for example, the two processions about

To intersect and commingle above the arch

Of the half-done bridge: What caprice of equinox

Or solstice brought together the radiant monstrance

Of the Corpus Christi and the hallowed sorrows

 

Of the Mater Dolorosa? What conspiracy of discalced

Franciscans and wealthy Dominican schoolmasters

Brought them there, the one bearing the grieving mother

On a palanquin of flowers, the other holding up poles

Of the sacramental canopy sheltering the Eucharist—

 

And the black-and-white soutaned Reverendos

Clambering up a rickety, cumbersome ladder

To join the skirmish. What harlequinesque whimsy,

Better yet, what remade ribaldry from Juan Osong

Sent them scrambling for their souls’ safety?

 

 

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In my frame: It’s what’s to be seen

Under the arch of the partial bridge that

Reminds us of another of History’s fancies.

 

The man in the bowler hat, fresh from his

Execution at Bagumbayan, bullet wounds dripping

Red and luminous at his back, rides the baroto

 

Standing upright: rowed toward the other

Shore by Elias—the boatman of Manunggul—

As Maria Clara waves for them to hurry up.

 

The fantasy asks or mocks: What bridge

Can stand the power of the Patronato Real

Or time’s ravages? We see every thing—

 

Boat, figures, and processions—in medias res,

In art’s subterfuge of suspended animation:

The arch both dwarfs and canonizes the figures

 

Below: They have become altar pieces

In the retablo and pantheon of our excavated

Memory, the re-awakened anitos of our buried

 

History. Is it only they who make the crossing?

 

 

Marne Kilates

4 July 2017

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1

In the mind of Fra Victorino del Moral

It arches into space inscribing the noble

Intentions of the Patronato Real:

Upon these igneous blocks of volcano stone

We build the routes of the colonial Church.

 

Now it arches into half a universe of mold

And the aerial roots of balete and other

Leaves sprung from the seeds left

By queasy birds among its joints and crevices

Where the mortar had chipped or come off,

 

And two centuries and the jungle have

Grown thick in its disuse. Deemed ill-designed

By his superiors, it became the cura’s

“Puente de Capricho,” now concealed from

Memory’s traffic, monument to men of little faith.

 

 

2

In the memory of the Indio it was

Tulay ng Pigì: whacks in the buttocks

Of the hapless conscript if he came late

For work. The work of the Lord must

Not be delayed. Ruega por nosotros.

 

Plodding through the brush and mud,

The rubble and incline was the work

Of the devil: every Indio who had to catch up

With the gang cursed. Each face of adobe

Was our ass bared, El peo de nosotros.

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3

History’s whim might have put together

Two ekphrastic minds to retell Majayay’s

Abridged tale of connection: the imagining

Of History itself and its re-vision, as in

Re-eyeing the I that looks at what has been,

 

And re-speaking it in the special language

Of tint or pigment or the mesh of old canvas,

The grain of old wood, the bracing air—ayáhay,

Maayáhay, Majayjáy—of old Laguna by the lake

And its languid rivers, the reverie of heroes.

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* “HOCUS” is a distinctive art show consisting of paintings conceived by two persons, Saul Hofileña Jr. and Guy Custodio, “a historian who does not paint and a painter wary of history,” in the words of the curator. The one first dreamed up the ideas while the other executed them on canvas. Their productive collaboration became such that at certain points they could almost work independently or they fed each other’s ideas even by email. The title of the show is a combination of the first syllables of their surnames. Writer and historian Gemma Cruz Araneta curated the show.

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