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The Poet & the Fire Piston

for Oscar V. Campomanes

 

 

                 “What philosophy worthy of the name has truly been

                 able to avoid the link between poem and theorem?”

 

                                                        —Michel Serres

 

 

They say Filipinos invented the fire

Piston. Before they were ever called that

Name. The curious device came,

It was said, from further east beyond

Sumatra, on the path of Magellan and Elcano,

It could only be from those marine

Settlements that became Manila or Cebu.

 

They made it out of animal horn or bamboo

And carved graceful designs and even

Inlaid nacre on the cylinder. The better

To ignite tinder with, as the symbols

Of slinking salamanders made the slam rod

Tube sinuous and pretty. Pigafetta

Brought back samples that ended up

In Pisa’s museum basements. Galileo was

Fascinated with it just before he faced

The Inquisition. It resurfaced only

A few centuries later to become basis

And inspiration to the newfangled spitfire,

The engine of internal combustion.

 

What if a Hanunuo carved an ambahan*

On the small bamboo tube he sent to his

Sweetheart who lived on the shore

Of Lake Nauhan? And her bother

Repurposed it with pump and tinder

To produce the precious spark. This is how

Poetry must have sired the early science

Of fire. Or how they in fact were born

Of the same desire for warmth and light,

Including in the process turbulence

And chaos, silence as well as explosion,

But ordered to a point of focus—the flash

Of soul and smoke, math and myth.

                                                                                   

 

Marne Kilates

1 March 2016 

*A poetic form consisting of seven syllables per line and an indefinite number of lines in monorhyme. It is native to the Hanunoo Mangyan people of Oriental Mindoro.

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