Friday, October 17, 2003

I have to follow-up a dreadful blog on dreadful Bush with beautiful poetry. Call it cleansing. Call it exorcism. (But I swear I'm not going to blog about Dubya again. He just irritates me so much....)



This one's an email from dear Naya, who's infectious about her new poetic find Silvia Curbelo...



         Kailangan ko lang i-share. May bago akong paboritong makata (flavor of

         the month daw ang dating) -- si Silvia Curbelo. She's Cuban, American,

         and fantastic! Available pa ang libro nya (The Secret History of Water)

         sa Aeon Books. :) Mabuhay ang tula sa panahong lubog ang lahat sa trabaho.



         Naya





         FOR ALL THE GOODBYES

         By Silvia Curbelo



         In a room not unlike this one

         someone is always leaving someone else.



         Someone blows out a candle.

         Someone has finished the wine.



         The single glove laid open

         on the windowsill tells only



         half the story. Try to imagine

         the hundred metaphors for flight,



         for endings, a door finally closing

         and what is left behind--



         the robe with its torn lining,

         a scarf, cufflinks, an old shoe.



         A man's abandoned overcoat

         brings to mind train stations,



         suitcases, footsteps

         vanishing down the hall.



         There is no mistaking

         the closet door left ajar,



         the empty hangers

         like the thin shoulders



         of loss, of distance.

         If you have loved



         someone like that

         you have imagined his hands



         opening other doors, unbuttoning

         his shirt in other rooms.



         Even as the buttons fall away

         there is no turning back.



         A dropped shoe is an island.

         A scarf will break your heart.





         JANIS JOPLIN

         By Silvia Curbelo



         There is a song like a light

         coming on too fast, the eyes

         blink back the static of the road

         and in the distance you can almost see

         the clean, sweet glow of electric guitars.



         Call it the music of the rest of our lives,

         a stranger's face peering through

         a window, except that face is yours,

         and mine. Music like backtalk,



         like wind across your heart,

         cigarette smoke and bourbon.

         Music our mothers must have held

         softly between damp sheets,

         before taxes, before layoffs,

         before the first door closing.



         Not piano lessons, not a hymn

         or a prayer, or a soft voice

         singing you to sleep, but a song

         like a green light on summer evenings

         after a ball game, after rain,

         when the fields finally let themselves go,

         and we'd drive past the Westinghouse plant,

         past Vail and Arcadia. Music

         of never going back.



         I'm talking about car radios,

         about backseats and hope,

         and the jukebox at Pokey's

         where the local boys tried

         their new luck on anyone

         and the real history of the world

         was going doan, nickels and

         dimes, the music floating

         at the far end of a first kiss--



         the first light of the body

         that isn't love but is stronger than love,

         because it must not end,

         because it never lasts.



Thanks Naya!
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

---

GO TO OLDER POSTS GO TO NEWER POSTS