Category: Philippines

                     (In memory of Nikos Kazantzakis)

“Crete,” I murmured. “Crete…” and my heart beat fast. – Nikos Kazantzakis

Between the arid mountains
the daybreak sprouts like a news of victory.
Golden, majestic, like a raised sword
anointing life to all things.
The dawn jumps off the cliff,
the darkness like a robber crouches on a rock,
the light advances like a warhorse panting, exalting,
forging an orange dust of strength in its way.
I can hear it howling, rolling from the sun-baked mountains
into the flame-blue sea.
My forehead opens like a fissure,
the locks of my eyes unlock and fall,
my breast unbolts like a metal door,
a string of light worms its way into my memory,
the song of time before it was written down echoes
in my ears.
The rocks, the stones, the animals, the plants, the trees, the minerals
steam with life, a divine vertigo possesses my loins,
between my thighs the world chants a story larger than my own.
The I in me is squashed by this resplendence,
my name scatters to the winds,
my blood seething, beguiling, conjuring, mixing
with the music of the possible.
A bird of light pecks my body with its vitality,
its shrill cry of defiance breaks through my chest,
disarmed, half-naked, ankle-deep in the water
whatever is left in me I give to astonishment.
Let daybreak obliterate my intentions, my dreams,
my competence, my mastery, instead let it bathe me
with freshness and turbulence, wound me with the luxury
and insolence of the desire to live.
I body of fire, I love alone on the shore, retracing my steps
towards solitude. We go to the sea to forget that our lives
are imprisoned and bound, we swim to learn how long
we’ve been waiting for the ache of the flesh to burn,
to undertake the labors of desire, to be shattered into smithereens,
to lose control like the waves, to be devoured by greater things,
to feel the viciousness of July in the lips, the fullness
of summer ripening in untamed breasts, to venerate the curve
of the mountains, the sun-tanned back, the shoulder blades,
the salt-scented hair, the delicious blue of the eyes, the devouring
song of water, to be blessed by its lushness, to be cleansed by its ferocity.
I will misunderstand,
I will dare and dive,
I will give not my kindness but my intransigence,
I will consume and be consumed by my giving
feel my bones turn into fishes, my heart into remorseless waves,
my flesh into smoldering sands.
The only relief is to be consumed.

The sea stares at me green with vehemence its eyes
like the stony indifference of a lizard’s glare:
“Why have you come?–
was your journey not far enough, sad enough, exciting enough,
troublesome enough—sailing from island to island,
from the tropics to the Mediterranean,
your wind-swept life?”
It is true—it is not our will but the winds of consequences
that decides our Odyssey.
And wherever I go I bring with me the ashes of my country.
“Did you come like these ravenous tourists
who raze the landscapes like a plague?
Once this island was the birthplace of the gods
until merchants and speculators arrived turned the island
into the birthplace of servants.
Civilization makes exiles of you. The boredom of the new.
What adventure is left increasing cement and glass?
You seek for the pristine, you formulate a paradise
out of the gloom of the modern, folded in the stress of the mighty
everyday want. To stroll anywhere but home, to leave to places
one cannot live, to have faith in what can be consumed, heirs
of the faithless, you wander in the surface where Democracy
has bloodied its hands, because of want collaborators are not lacking,
because of loneliness wanderers are circling around.
Curiosity has lost its gold, nothing is of value but gold.
The present is over-stuffed with airplanes and ferries,
sea and sky black with brine, time is back and forth, is escaping and storing,
is leaving and going nowhere. Memory coffined in beach resorts
and BnBs. Comfort is your breakfast, comfort is your deathbed.
Your soul sinks in the polluted tricks of the market place,
you take refuge in exotic hospitalities, from mountain to mountain,
sea to sea, from island to island, village to village, to look
for what you have lost, to appease the ennui that shears you
like a razor, underneath the soles of your shoes a sting of woe
clings upon you. You trample over our lands with your luggage
of pleasure-seeking and extravagance, a backpack to fill
with spices and ornaments, with ayahuasca and illumination.
You collect a handful of memories, a cart load of souvenirs of your faces,
and leave a monument of trash. Your corner of the world
full of monuments and bird shit.
When localities lose their soul, when homes lose the honey of their welcome,
you become tourists, a distant landscape becomes a bargain for escape,
the local gods perish, the vistas flattened into a coin purse.
Tourism spreads and devours like a cancer.
This tour is a voyage to Hades.
In my waters you will not find healing
my salt-touch will remind you of your wound.”

The voice of the sea—mighty, vibrant, taunting,
admonishing—hammering into my ears,
my lungs swell like storm clouds, my feet tingling
with parched sands, a sweet numbing buzz in my temples,
a thudding hunger in my bowels.
The sky like a fisherman stretching its muscular arms,
dragging my heart twitching like a fish caught in its luminous net.
I am who you think I am. The ephemeral face of the faceless age,
the one who sleepwalks through a hail of bullets, who tiptoes
in a burning house, whose eyes are nailed on the screen’s glamorous
glow that won’t let us sleep. A one-eyed wanderer, a bored seeker,
a frustrated adventurer who roams the world in search
of this shadow called the self—conspicuous and ostentatious
but never present, noisy and wordy but voiceless,
afraid to kneel, disdains age, sneers at death,
this self which is extravagantly visible but only exists
at the approval of the other thumb.
What do I know of this world outside the eggshell
of my isolation except my ennui,
I who is nourished by destruction,
who quenches his thirst with the milk of recognition,
I am a servant of distraction—the Minotaur that dismembers you alive,
the beast that plucks your eyes out with its thundering illusions,
suffocates you with its tentacles of banality, eats your soul piece
by piece, sucks the meaning out of you until you become an image—
a self-devouring face.
I do not ask for buoyancy but for shipwreck—a going under
the surface of things, not a kiss on the forehead
but a slap of your wave on my face. I want to be shaken
like an orange tree, touched by the cool summer breeze of sanity,
to awake into the throbbing mystery of the familiar world.
I am tired of parades, the cheering and clamor of the screen,
the disguises that leave me hallow.
I want the real to drip like sweat on my temples,
to knead the ordinary hours on the table of praise,
to unclasp my hands for the midday birds to unleash
a torrent of melodies that calls for our slow disappearance
from the scene—listening not as an accident but undoing.
It is the miracle of the sea that it makes us small and imperceptible
that clarity is possible again. Her voice entering the mind’s turmoil
quelling all definitions and aims, blurring all identities and schemes.
The light engulfs the mountains, the water rises to our necks,
the hawk swirls on the peaks, heights and depths are conniving,
the laboring horse curses under the tortuous heat,
the watermelon cut in half blushes like legs spread open,
your mouth tastes of drinking water on a hot breezeless night,
the prickly pears drift in stillness their hushed prickles
answer the fingers with tender hurt, the date palms dream of
moonlight and travelers sharing the same bed, the azaleas sprout
in all their splendor their rose tongues hang satiated,
the flies swarm where swollen fruits bask like women’s thighs,
the fountains shriek as the wind approaches with lust.
My soul becomes a cool rock of the no-matter-what,
I am washed and refreshed with detachment by the tingling bell
tied to a goat’s neck,
the sun’s laughter is sailing through my blood, in my bones
the sonorous voices of my ancestors that speak:
Put on your armor of attention,
brandish your sword of awe,
raise your shield of stillness, soldier of anonymity,
quiet warrior of the peripheral who shoots his arrows
of praise in all directions, who scorns an easy victory,
whose allegiance is to the imperishable, whose task
is to sing of endings.
This new Odysseus will not conquer or show the way,
he, too will seek the way among the lost, his tongue will not
bring the good news but the unheard of fire.
A warrior—yes—an escape artist, too. Elusive, an apostle
of heartbrokenness, a smuggler of memory, lover of stillness,
student of slowness, he stands under laurelled philosophies,
he sits beneath the vine leaves of mystery,
his way is the backdoor.

At the water’s edge, over the dark breathing houses,
above the silhouette of the heaving mountains surrounded
by palm trees with lips stiffened by the blue breeze,
in the silence of a centuries-old church, prepare your heart
as a calf sleeping its way to tomorrow’s knife, take its grief
in the sea-side tavern where the descendants of Socrates
feast and argue, let it sigh among the branches and leaves,
let it chill amongst the people and bread
for grief’s altar is a clear night fragrant with stars and kitchen smoke
and santouri.
No precipice so tall sorrow cannot reach,
no wound so deep music cannot touch.
As you behold the flicker of beginning’s light,
traces of orange-blossom scent of sunrise, listen deeper,
behind you, inside the closed, sorrow-kissed windows of your eyes,
she is there waiting anchored to the roots of mystery with
the epic patience of an olive tree, beautiful, hurt, betrayed, merciful.
Life—the grief-stricken, praise-wanting Penelope waiting
by the loom of endings, sighing to be loved, humming
the forgotten song of the stars hidden in your chest,
calling you home.