Three Poems
THE RUBAIYAT OF CIRILIO F. BAUTISTA When night blooms with mandolins and roses the evening star in grief presupposes the end to which all flesh is led by chance, its whimsy, how it opens and closes that scene on stage, that is pricked by war to redeem parental bones, pricked once more for flames to strike dry sticks on the beach. Nor does it keep a tally of the score. And then the smoke overwhelms the sky, the music crackles and cannot die to death’s untrue beginning, a few dust on the stone, a false chronology. And the angels and the roosters will know how short a tenure has honor on the snow, in the dropping leaves when all that blood brings to act is a bedazzled hero. Behold the land to which we give our name, that wakes and slumbers and cannot disclaim storm-drenched rice fields and broke bridges— love struggling out of the ruins of shame. Love? Ah, there is no need to speak of it when sea drums hasten the murdering beat and nothing to break the boiling water when hate and hunger and ignorance meet. And fruits decay on the midsummer vine and eagles hunt in fields that once were mine to pick for tunes in my guitar, the wish for meat in the grove, epics in the wine. And now everything leaving without grace, fools and pretenders have instilled their ways in dim corridors of the republic to sing the rude years, down all our days.
VILLANELLE FOR OLD MEN
I arrive anywhere at my own time. Old age has taken much from my eager spring. I need to change the clockwork of country and clime so towers will wait for my signal to strike the chime, so vines will wait for me before they cling, for I arrive anywhere at my own time. I know it’s odd but it’s not a crime to eat breakfast at night or supper in the morning. I need to change the clockwork of country and clime. I can adjust to sickness and pills but, past my prime, I can’t follow a fixed schedule of everything. I arrive at my own time. I can speak of death and faith and the uses of rhyme to those who share my slow-paced traveling. I need to change the clockwork of country and clime. And you, belovéd, always have my passions sublime though I come in late with the flowers and the kissing. I arrive anywhere at my own time. I need to change the clockwork of country and clime.
HOSPITAL BLUES
Pills resurrect my heartbeat all night long, pills and blood stain test my heart all night long, always the weak must rally to be strong. To feel quick I write poems in my head, poems darting in and out of my head, the tropes tremble, there is so much to be said. In wakefulness is a spell I can hold, wakefulness, the shield and lance I can hold, against the assault of pain in the cold. But in the dark there is no breaking the blues, in the dark there’s no impending the blues, you’re just one note from saying, “What’s the use?” Nights, I turn on the radio on the tabletop, deep-toned nostalgia on the tabletop, I hate to sleep unsure of waking up.