That Space of Writing¹

Gemino Abad

And when I write, I want the largest space,
Of such breadth, of such length as this world
Never had of forests nor virgin paper,
Where the words never were, their script accursed,
but only now
Descending to cry, Freedom!

Then my hands should never feel there were walls
That grow their ominous lichen between my fingers
Nor my elbows graze the wild beards of rocks
That cathedral my tribe wailing for their god,
but only now
Descending without speech!

The words that never were create anew my race,
Their mornings stand clear where ancient skies
cascade
Down the singing gorges of the wind. My hands
Draw again the map that alien voyages had
wrecked
O long ago
Descending with Cross and Krag!

My elbows swing where rooms void their space,
And I laugh to see the weird syllables of speech
Open their abyss, and stride across the heartland
Of my people’s silences where their eyes pour
like sunlight
Descending to claim the earth!

O when I write again, the words of any tongue
Shall find no tillage in our blood, nor my hands
Scruple to choke their weed, for first must they
bleed
Their scripture in our solitude and yield to our
scythe’s will
Descending to carve our heart.

——

¹ Father and Daughter (op. cit.): 3-4; In Ordinary Time (op.cit.): 115-16; also in Pinoy Poetics: A Collection of Autobio-graphical and Critical Essays on Filipino and Filipino-American Poetics, ed. Nick Carbó (San Francisco & St. Helena: Meritage Press, 2004): 4-5; “Ese Espacio de la Escritura,” tr. Beatriz Álvarez Tardío, in Perro Berde / Revista Cultural Hispano-Filipina, Dec 2010: 95 (with critical introduction by the same translator, “Antes de imaginar Filipinas elige un poema,” pp. 91-94); Under the Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry, ed. Khavn de la Cruz and Joel M. Toledo (Q.C.: The Antithesis Collective Publishing Co., 2001:3.