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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

entry arrow12:32 PM | How to be a Lintel

By Sid Gomez Hildawa



Marjorie said, “Let us visit the sage
of poetry at her hilltop home in Dumaguete
from where you can observe the ferries
crossing the sea to Cebu, and from her
learn the art of transporting words
from shore to shore one sense at a time.
Like traversing the distance between two columns
With your own body bearing the weight
of all your future children jumping up and down
the springboard of your spine.” And so we went.

The sage said, “The lintel cannot be too unforgiving
or it breaks; let poetry bend and let your span
be measured the way one approximates
the height of a tree by the length of its shadow
at sunset, so that you do not buckle
under the stress of your own body stretching
to touch the other end.” She lay flat on her back
like a beam, almost weightless, afloat on air
with her head and ankles held up by two acacias,
one on each end, and though there was ample headroom
in the opening she cleared up for us, we bowed as we passed.

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