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THE RIVER SPEAKS by Arlene Yandug

The poem describes a child pleading for peace in their homeland. The child asks that weapons like knives, guns, and bullets be put away so that families can live freely without fear and children can play without worrying about violence. The child wants to be able to enjoy their youth with their grandparents on their ancestral lands instead of having to flee to Manila to find safety.

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Lee Suarez
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297 views

THE RIVER SPEAKS by Arlene Yandug

The poem describes a child pleading for peace in their homeland. The child asks that weapons like knives, guns, and bullets be put away so that families can live freely without fear and children can play without worrying about violence. The child wants to be able to enjoy their youth with their grandparents on their ancestral lands instead of having to flee to Manila to find safety.

Uploaded by

Lee Suarez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE RIVER SPEAKS by Arlene Yandug

Biray, pilot me
Dayangba, guide me
Even if this is the way it goes
Even if this is the way it flows
In the bend I might have a short cut
In the curve I might pass a short way
Like a light you illumine me
Like a torch you light my way
Like a candle with incense you guide me
Like a resin torch you light my way
In retelling a disorderly story
In narrating a disorderly tale.
Enter, all you listeners
You who eavesdrop, come nearer
To the story in my mind
To the tale I am thinking of
– from the invocation of the epic Olaging
My name
is Impupulangui.
My people
hunters and punters all
call me suba agos, danao.
Such names speak
for my birthright:
I gather memories
of the earth and
flow on intractable,
sliding around stones
from shadow
to shadow among the trees.
Know I am
the wind’s path,
drifters find
their way through me,
their boats and rafts
loaded full with broken
bits of sea and forest:
corals, pearls
traded with porcelains
from China; gold
swapped with iron
tools from the Malay
peninsula; honey and
beeswax with
beads and goods
from Venice and India.
All rivers outlast
the dreamers
on the banks,
the waters carrying
their dreams thousands
of years away,
turning twisting
purling inside cavities,
rising rushing,
branching on forest floors:
the centuries keep
tarrying, caught up
for a moment
on tender-throated lilies.
The longest way
they say
is the only way
to the sea.
Where does
a river begin?
What is a silkweb’s beginning?
Can you gather
all the silk
from the button-belly
of a spider?
Take me a mantic
enchantress then,
rambling, riddling
to the primates, the plovers,
meandering to you.
No matter
how many times
you reverse
your padded doublet,
Friend
you will be helplessly
lost here:
you’re a bird behind
a field of chameleons behind
in this country.
On your map, I’m just
a tangle of lines – think
of your matted beard.
Think: brown race, its
convoluted genealogy.
But know I’m as real
as the spurt
you just scooped
from a crack of rock.
The water glitters
on your palm,
your huge nose
detecting a chill
of a faraway winter.
Look
on my surface:
I’m holding you
and the clouds
behind you captive.
But you’ll acknowledge
only the dark pools
of your haunted eyes;
the fungi chewing
your elbows
as you gather
my body rippling
under your touch.
Your face will warp like
a conch shell as sounds
of water converge
inside you into
fierce
cataracts.
Ayy talo-on
sa maogyab
Stop your
merrymaking
Stop your merriment.
Here, you can never
be equal to your yearning:
I’ll slip forever
through the fingers
of your love.
Pass
your sword
through my neck.
I’ll be whole again and again
water on a sieve
forever
in a state of wholing,
unhurting.
When I spill into
Cabacan, I am called
Cabacan river,
when I flow into Agusan,
I become Agusan,
and now as I bleed
immensely away
from you
you call me Rio,
Rio Grande of Mindanao.
But I am Buluan,
I am Allah
I am Libungan
I am Pulangi,
I am the blues of abalone
the shimmer of gold dust
the fluids of amnions,
the veins of pith
wrapping
the citrus earth.
Your compass is
wretchedly small here.
Your map,
put away your map:
you can’t chart
terror and beauty.
You won’t see
the stones lying quiet
like shadows
at the bottom;
the blue crayfishes
darting through
the sad hull of a boat;
and beside that boat,
the half-sunk chests
of white men who
had come before you.
The trunks still stacked full
with remingtons,
combs and mirrors.
The glass beads will roll
with the pebbles
and there is
the sound of bones
nobody hears.
Above you, the wrens
are darting through
the leaves.
Gali gali gali.
Listen to the language
of trees.
How exactly
are you trapped here?
What are you
trapped in?
But only
the sad calls of foghorns
from faraway oceans
reach you. More than
sea-changed,
you’re sea-worn:
every inch of you
pale. Frayed
like the sails of carracks
and caravels calcified only
by a conqueror’s
resolve.
Tonight
I’ll be beautiful.
My sprays
will froth brightly
under the moon.
The bald moon swims,
the stars gold, lilies white,
the bones below whiter.
When you see
me
remember
the sparkling sails
in the blue Pacific
of your memory,
when the world was
an endless
stretch of seas.
Tonight,
my rapids will break
into shards,
sharp as the songs
of crickets.
Under
the southern skies,
I will freely open up,
a path of quicksilver
forever ahead of you
in the coming
dawn.

IMAGINING DISTANCE By Raul Moldez


More or less. That’s how you describe
the distance between us. You, being
in the city that never sleeps, humming
lullabies for babies that never grew in
your womb. Babies, in whose veins, there’s
a clear absence of our blood. And I, here
in the city that gets new monikers each time
a new chief executive sits in. What used to be

the city of golden friendship, it later progresses


into a city in bloom, in blossom and in boom.
This new tagline speaks of accuracy.
Because recently a loud boom exploded
amid the city’s silence. And on the spot, lie
amongst shattered glasses, broken San Mig light
bottles, deformed chairs and tables, bodies
lifeless like statues. So don’t come home
yet as I thought of going in there instead. And
join you in finding hopes for our tomorrow.
And together, perhaps a decade from now,
let’s pack our stuff and fly back home. By
that time, maybe the pangs of grief that grip
the people’s heart are gone. More or less.

MARAWI By Simeon Dumdum


When they came, pounded their way through Marawi, waving black flags,
When they stormed a hospital and torched houses and emptied jails,
I was home many miles away, about to nap, book in hand.

When they sacked a cathedral and grabbed a priest and his people,
The day slipped into evening, promising rest
And stray talk in the balcony, where we would sit, watching the stars.

We woke up to a morning of enough warmth and window light,


But by then folk were fleeing by the thousands
From their homes in the wrecked city, carrying all but nothing.
The women trapped in a school kept to the floor,
Holding on to the hijabs given by friends,
Their ears glued to the jihadists outside the rooms, passing by.

At that time, the wife and I were having snacks


In a place with a good view of the channel
Where the boats sailed to points south, to Mindanao, I surmised,

Where the thugs shot civilians with their hands tied


When they caught the poor people about to flee,
And shouting “Allahu Akbar” with every shot to the head,

Or cut head, and seeing this, a refugee


Sought escape across a stream only to drown,
At which time we were in a mall cooling our heels, and our souls.

MARAWI By Jaime an Lim


What the Sleeping Lady dreamed of
Shimmered on the surface of Lake LAnao,
A mirror of her blue calm or troubled grey.
In the Sacred Mountain, beyond Signal Hill,
The fog tarried for a while, remembering
A heady night of mystery and magic.
Then the darkness lifted, as it always did
For a thousand years, revealing a sunlit world.
It was morning again in the land of Indarapatra.
Open spaces moved out of the shadows:
Rolling hills, verdant valleys, endless skies.
The air filled with waking sounds sights scents:
Wood fire, smoke, roasting fish, boiling rice,
Grated coconut, turmeric, beef randang, coffee.
The distant tingle of a kulintang.
A woman fetching water from a spring.
A hawk gliding motionless in the wind.
A barge playing its ancient trade on the lake
From the Banggolo wharf to the southern shore
Of Malondo, Taraka, and Tamparan.
The water incredibly blue,
Cool, crystal-clear, tranquil.
It was a good place then.

Till the terrible madness set in


And changed everything forever.

SHAPE OF ABSENCE By Jaime an Lim


The snake writhes
its fluent Arabic script
in the sand saying wait
saying ssstay a while.

The new moon is not


yet risen, the spring water
cupped into your hands
is swimming with God,
the field weaving its
shimmering coat of grass,
the wing rippling
and tumbling breathless
as a sweat drenched child.

Wait till the hour of alchemy


arrives, till the trouble first
settles down, till the ship carrying
a cargo of your past and future
sails away, never to return.

The window catches the afterimage


of dying stars. Soon the moon,
a pale thin slice, wafts into view
and begin its silent vigil.

In the dark you slowly start


changing into something
you've always dreamed
of becoming, into the shape
of absence which is air,
less than shapeless air.

Striped of your mortal


Shackles joys sorrows love,
even love, you grow lighter.
a fluff of feather, ephemeral.

First your feet then your hands


and arms and become
ghostly, your mouth sings
the worthless song of emptiness,

your translucent skin


peels of like an old map,
country by country
till you become nothingness
incarnate, bodiless energy

glowing in the dark


passing into absence
the dear deathless absence
the sweet everlasting absence.

PANGAMPO SA BATANG HIGAUNON by Shem Linohon


Migbaya sa mga kahoy ug bato
Ampo ako
Dili na kampilan
Sumpay kamot amay
Dili na pusil
Kwentas abang Sikyuriti
Dili na hilak
Lola Bai
Wala na mosunod
Lolo Datu, patay
Kay bala agi iya ulo
Iuli na Don Takaw
Amo Yuta
Aron mga amay, inay
Dili na lakaw
Dili na adto Maynila
Aron kami libre na
Sulod-sulod ug dula-dula
Uban sa akong anghura
Didto sa gikoral nila
Nga amo yuta.

PLAYING WITH GUNS by Raul Moldez


Item: Government troops have captured 172 children recruited by communist insurgents in the
past six years, showing that the rebels are violating conventions of child soldiers.
Their world is fun
Revolving around
The territory of fantasy.

Yet their hands hold


Not battery-operated
Toys and dolls but rifles

With curved magazines.


Guevara’s local versions
Tutored them how to pull

The triggers of death


Until the live targets
Vague in camouflage lie,

Drooling the fluid of life.


Even at a fragile age,
Their bones are flinty.

Climbing mountains
Is their ritual
From dusk to dawn.

Now their world


Is black, forlorn
Like a shadow.

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