Child’s Play and Other Poems
Nino Soria de Veyra
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Child's Play and Other Poems Copyright Š 2009 Nino Soria de Veyra All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in part or in whole without the written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews Published by Nino Soria de Veyra Davao City, Philippines Book and cover design by Nino Soria de Veyra Cover photo by Jean Claire Dy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications where these poems, or earlier versions, first saw print: Ani, Caracoa, National Midweek, Other Voices International Project (www.othervoicespoetry.org), Philippines Free Press, Sands & Coral, and Solidarity.
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Contents Child’s Play
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In My Garden
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Deception
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Turtle
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Garden Jungle
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Soap Opera for My Labandera
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Wake 11 The Intelligence Chief ’s Cat
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War Poem 1
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War Poem 2
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War Poem 3
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Burden
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Claire de Lune 19 Babel
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At a Writers’ Workshop
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for Tatay and Nanay
When we open our eyes each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning to see. We are not given the world: we make our world through incessant experience, categorization, memory, reconnection. – Oliver Sacks
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Child's Play I used to send questions Scrawled on huge balloons Demanding answers from the sky. Now I tool with satellites and know The sky cannot talk or write and balloons Pop not halfway their mission. Still, I would like to fly a small balloon. I won’t, of course, my children Would think me strange.
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In My Garden the ferns potted and hung will crack their pots and drop the grass will choke my feet and pull me down under its carpet like my cat I sit in the sun not waiting but the trail of shadows in my garden is creeping creeping gently wafting night smells of ylang-ylang
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Deception ten floors up a lizard its ancient body clock punctual at sun set crawls down stopping every now and then along the slender tree trunk then kisses the ground nitrified loam of the arboretum ten floors up
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Turtle (for Lina) leaves weighed down with dew the laurel branch ripples the pool weightless in the water the turtle hangs — its head silver in the early morning light
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Garden Jungle (for Marj) we plant next season’s blooms we trim the hedges mow the lawn we hang the wind chimes from the bamboo grove we have clipped and pruned and trained to plot the rising full moon’s arc across our sky and then we sit under its arch listening to the bells filling spaces we have made our own while beneath us weeds break through the ground
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Soap Opera for My Labandera Over soapsuds and women sobbing on the radio My labandera frets how her husband gnashes His teeth driving his jeepney in his sleep And now with the jeep in the shop‌ Could I give her an advance, she asks. She parlays her life bleached by the sun As I squint at white sheets glaring from the line And looking down see her glabrous hands Scoured sheen and smooth with scrubbing Fresh and soft vestments for my daily guise Churning out quotidian dread into dreams Of love requited, wealth restored, wrongs avenged — Forgettable tales my real-life heroine Laps up without fail, all the while chortling Her doubts at counterfeit happy endings.
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Wake We shared deaths years ago and Beaded time with our prayers Our rosaries grow thick with callus Today we share another death We keep vigil — Our tears do not dry Our grief cannot be stilled like Our tongues heavy with keening Speaking litanies of accreting sorrow Maybe tomorrow we will unbury our dead Fill the air with our lament Wake the living with our wildest wails To stop the staccato of bullets that Scatter our hearts Deafen our will with fear
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The Intelligence Chief's Cat It was your eyes convinced me Frightened but flashing defiance You stood your ground Beside your dead Commie master And your meal of leftovers So I spared your life That day we raided the slums You didn’t disappoint me Though gutting a dead rat is A bit much. My men too Get so hot on their first blood But you’ll learn fast, even now You sit in your corner Licking your paws clean Who can pin you with that sly Grin and wink of innocence?
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Don’t worry about the missus She has deployed the servants To mop up the evidence and With the officers’ wives Has left to make a killing At the mahjong tables… Ssssh. I’m off to the mistress So here’s your milk But remember next time Spare us the stink.
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War Poem 1 All wars are boyish, and are played by boys. – Herman Melville In the woods At some village’s edge Beyond the reach Of a mother’s call The children play Their games of war — Guavas for loot Bruises for medals. In the mountain forests Men fight their wars Perhaps for bigger stakes Or noble causes — We can only hear the distant Thunder of their guns And imagine how frenzied Leaves dance on air Riddled by bullets And we can almost feel As the thick smoke clears Their green and gentle fall On bodies beneath leafless branches. 14
In some village house At the end of day A mother of stern eyes And soothing hands With boiled guava leaves Treats the bruises Of a tearful child.
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War Poem 2 My little soldiers fight over Who will play the Vietcong Who will play the GI… Gunfire must have startled them From sleep the wide-eyed little Guerrillas in the room’s dark corners Cast in the glow of the tube I watch my son reconnoiter The bombed-out city streets As one by one his buddies drop Dead in the crosshairs of a sniper’s sight. He corners the sniper, my daughter, A mere girl who screams pain As bullets jerks twists her body round. My GI falls to the ground Hands stifling his wracking sobs While my Vietcong hides her smile Her death that breaks the movie’s hero.
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War Poem 3 Bred on Westerns, in childhood Games I used to say: I’m tired of playing cowboy always Let me be the redskin — Light of tread Silent as old roots of trees Tracks lost in streams Smell of dreams carried By no wind, I stalk The enemy in the cold rain. As he warms his belly with coffee I make my move — No leaves crackling under my feet No cavalry coming in time to save him.
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Burden I turn the corner from Your house and drown In the smell of ylang-ylang I carry on my shoulders Scent of your hair
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Claire de Lune … And you’d laugh If I tell you I’m this desolate Strand bleached by the sun’s Jealous stare as I wait till waves Your lovesong soothe my coral bones And my sand turn silver in your coming — My Beautiful! So I won’t say it. In this moonglow the edges Of my words are blurred And in this chill air How would they mean Through chattering teeth? We could walk to the end Of this beach and get nowhere But Oh, how in each other’s arms We’d love to burrow and have No more need for speech.
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Babel to Balagtas and other Tagalog writers from a Leyteño writing in Waray and English (for Roger Sicat) One after another your sons chant Words, each time a flower blooms From out their mouths to lay On your pedestal so white. It’s getting to be a hothouse here. But I do not understand you — A pilgrim to your laurels I wield a dictionary To your land: words’ machete To the jungle in my mind. O Francisco, if only I knew Your face with my hands
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Then I could write with your mouth And paper will be gardens. Though now as I weed my way In the plaza of your name I hear your singing, it strings My ears my mind my heart — A sampaguita lei around My soul, listen — My hands, my tongue’s gnarled Knots being rooted to many lands, Hum your laurels, blossoms Of words in my palms.
Francisco Balagtas is regarded as the equivalent of Shakespeare in Tagalog literature. Balagtas may remain "faceless" since no photographs or portraits of the poet exists. This fact, however, has not stopped artists from portraying him in their drawings and sculptures.
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At a Writers' Workshop I draw the drapes a little and peer Out: the sky is dark, rain starts to fall. I cannot hear its sound — Leaves twitch at every drop, the pool ripples The frogs in the rain hop around. Cased in by thick glass that mirrors back The room: I see myself, the other writers, The glow from our cigarettes, the smoke Rising up to a cloud hanging over our heads. Like a cartoonist I imagine balloons of words — Please string and fly them, light as poetry! Wanting to go out, I raise my hands, my fingers Stab the air and the words drop into Mouths that open and close open close… I remember another rainy afternoon Waist-deep in a pond, I saw on a lotus leaf A frog snap at a fly, its tongue a blur of quick. So unlike me with a temper, and net in hand —
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In Zoology class I cut open The specimen I finally caught, found its tongue Shriveled, grey like the sky above the factory Beside the swamp where frogs have a field day With falling ashes. I cast off my sewn-up Frog in a paper boat, and a chorus of mating calls Was struck, rain on paper. The rain has stopped but the frogs are still out I can almost hear them singing to each their Need and love, O listen — Outside it is raining Poems.
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Nino Soria de Veyra teaches in the Communication Arts and Creative Writing programs of the University of the Philippines Mindanao. He earned his BA Communication Arts (Literature) degree from UP Visayas Tacloban College, and his MA in English (Creative Writing) from Silliman University. He was a Fellow in both the Silliman National Writers Workshop and the UP National Writers Workshop. 24