Consider honestly
this piece of storm
in our city's entrails.
Incarnation of scrap,
what genius of salvage!
Its crib now molds our space,
its lusty gewgaws our sight.
In rut and in flood,
claptrap sex of traffic,
juke box of hubbub---
I mark your pride of zigzag
heeds no one's limbs nor light.
I sense our truth laughing
in our guts, I need
no words to fix its text.
This humdrum phoenix in our
street
is no enigma.
It is a daily lesson of history
sweating in a tight corner.
Its breakdowns and survivals
compose our Book of Revelation.
It may be the presumptive engine
of our last mythology.
Look, our Macho Incarnate,
sweat towel slung round his neck.
He collects us where the weathers
of our feet strand us.
His household gods travel with him,
with the Virgin of Sudden Mercy.
Our Collective Memory, he forgets
no one's fare. Nor anyone's destiny.
See how our countrymen cling
to this trapeze against all hazards.
All our lives we shall be acrobats
and patiently survive.
Our bodies feed on proximity,
our minds rev up on gossip.
We flock in small spaces,
and twitter a country of patience.
Here is our heartland still.
When it dreams of people,
it returns empty to itself,
having no power of abstraction.
Abandoned to itself
and in no one;s care,
Jeepneys caroom through it,
our long country of patience.
Nights I lie awake, I hear
a far-off tectonic rumble.
Is it a figment of desolation
from that reliquary of havoc,
or, out of its dusty hardihood,
that obduracy of mere survival,
a slow hoard of thunder,
from underground spirit of endurance?
Written by Gemino H. Abad. February 27, 1995. Philippines Graphic.
