May iniisip ka?
Oo.
Ano?
Ayaw kong sabihin. Baka magkatotoo.
Dahil makulit ka
Kilala kita. Oo, ikaw 'yun: Nagkasalubong na tayo minsan, sa LRT, sa Gotohan, sa kanto ng Aurora at Katipunan. Nagkatinginan tayo. Hindi mo ako kinausap, pero alam ko, nakilala mo rin ako. Kaya ka narito, di ba? Para sabihing, Oo, oo, ikaw nga 'yun. Naaalala kita.
na, mula noong 24 Enero, 2006, ang nakitambay dito
Many Feathers
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Many feathers. In the silence of many feathers. - Robert Bly
Today my window spoke to me in the language of leaves, told me of gravity and the tired hands of twilight day after day pulling at the trees’ thousand fingers, the trees with their lifetime of cycles, the wind, its invisible wings.
I have seen things only words will outlive, it said. But even words kneel before the silence of feathers. Once a poet peered inside the hollow of a tree and discovered words, and now I steal from him, repeat his curved consonants, the illusion of presence. In the secret, dim light I run my hands over the carcass of some dead creature he might have seen still heaving its last sighs.
A window knows nothing of the sorrows of speech, the weight of things breaking as wind carries them away from tongue. Darkness moves against darkness, night dresses its sleepy body in shadows, whispers its stories, and my window speaks what it sees. While I see only what is spoken:
A poet peers inside a tree and sees carvings across the corridors of a temple. I walk down a temple’s corridors and see the silhouette of a crow, many feathers, a door swinging idly in its jamb. I see wide windows and leaves fluttering in their furtive language. Leave me be, then, so that I may speak, and you may see. The curtains are drawn, and so let the sounds call forth things, and let them break, let their shards wound our ears. Let all things broken heal as they please.
Wasak!