The Bamboo Grove
for Marj
Merlinda Bobis
There are little bells. Each with a different story, a different timbre. Each of us sounded a bell of our choice on arrival. Soon we’re a coven of witches sitting under your bamboo grove with hanging bells. Your jasmine is in bloom, its scent in the air. We light candles, we read poetry. We are WICCA (Women Involved in Creating Cultural Alternatives). There’s you, Lina, maybe Elynia and Connie. And there’s me in awe of all of you and of the moment. I’m new to this. You’ve all been patiently inducting me to the urgent need to reclaim language from the stereotyping lexicon. Witches are poets. I think you say that.
There’s this old photograph. We’re having dinner around your dining table. There’s you at the kabisera, Eric to your left and Elynia beside him. To your right, Leni then me. I think there’s chicken adobo and some cut-up orange fruit or vegetable. Papaya or carrots? Rice too, of course. Near your hand, a bottle-green glass globe. With wine or water? And hanging above, a wooden parasol turned chandelier. We’re all smiling towards the photographer, though Leni looks serious, or only about to smile.
There are mushrooms sautéed in garlic and butter. You love the dish. You showed me how to cook it for this other dinner. Just you and me. I pine over some guy. I stay the night. You’ve just hurdled a slipped disc from lifting a heavy potted plant. We joke about your Freudian slip. Ah, all the heavy lifting that women do. We share your bed. You make sure the room’s completely dark because you say your eyes never fully close in sleep.
bell-bamboo-grove
bottle-green-globe
eyes-never-close
Threaded like this, the images become incantation.
batingaw-kawayan
luntiang-mundo
ay, mata-tenga-
‘wag-kang-sasara!
Hear the bells amidst the rustle of bamboo. Hear the green orb turn. Hear the incantation for watchfulness over our planet. All those guys we pined for have fallen off its orbit long ago. Now we know what deserves our full attention. Eyes and ears: don’t you dare shut! Or else. Or else.
My memories are not reliable. But all full circle now. From this incantation back to the poem I wrote for you more than three decades ago.
Kay Maria
(ang lipad ay awit sa apat na hangin, 1990)
sa lilim ng iyong gubat-kawayan,
naglolobo ang iyong saya—
binubuntis ka ng hangin,
sapagkat hanggang puson
ang iyong pagmamahal
sa lahat ng simoy na ligaw
hindi ko malilimot,
ako ang kakaibang hanging
panakaw na sumingit
sa buong-taong pista
ng lunti mong katawang
bumati sa akin ng hasmin
at matitinis na hagikhik
ng mumunting batingaw
inari mong iyung-iyo,
niyakap at ipinagbuntis din,
bulaklak na iniluwal
sa walang pagkamatay—
ngayon, heto ako’t bumubuhay
ng tula at buhay.
Maria, witch. Maria, babaylan. I was under your spell then. Many of us were. Listening to your dreamweaving, awed by your broomstick flights with Kristeva and Cixous—but for me, always the bells and the rustle of bamboo. And the flicker of candlelight on the rapt faces of friends reading poetry, their voices bells, their voices air. Maybe that’s why the bamboo rustled and rustled.
As it does now, as I read this poem. I hear bells. The poem begins to sing in my head! Lunch is served but I can’t let this go, I’m beside myself, I grab my baritone ukulele, I must follow my ear. Gamayin ang tono, gamayin ang alaala. To return to the bamboo grove. Return to those bells that we sounded long ago, as I find each note, each breath in this song that I offer our planet now.
I think we’ve always known about that green orb on your table.
So here you are, Marj: the song born from the poem now slightly tweaked. I’ve sung it for our shared commitment to that green orb. Something to play by plucking on a ukulele, maybe even a guitar. No music sheet, though. Ginamay lang dito sa Canberra. I don’t know notation, but I know bells. Each pluck of the string, the sounding of a bell, the turning of the globe—wherever you are, wherever I am.
Kay Marya
Composed into song: September 4-6, 2021
batingaw-kawayan
luntiang-mundoay,
mata-tenga-
‘wag-kang-sasara!
C F C
sa lilim ng ‘yung gubat-kawayan,
C F
naglolobo ang ‘yung saya—
C F
binubuntis ka ng hangin,
Bb Bb+ (3rd fret)
Sapagkat— hanggang puson
Bb Bb+
ang ‘yung— pagsinta
C F C C—
sa lahat ng simoy na ligaw.
C F C—
hindi ko malilimot—
Bb Bb+
ako ang— ibang hanging
Bb Bb+
panakaw— na sumingit
Bb F
sa pag-inog, sa pag-inog
Bb Bb+
ng lunti mong— katawang
C F C C—
bumati sa akin ng hasmin
C F
at matitinis na hagikhik
C F
ng mumunting batingaw
C F C—
tinangi mong tunay,
Bb Bb+ Bb Bb+
isina— puso, isina— puson,
Bb Bb+
tuloy— isinilang
Bb Bb+
na walang— kamatayan—
C F C
at ngayon, heto ako’t bumubuhay
C F C
ng tula at buhay— at buhay—
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Merlinda Bobis is a multi-awarded Filipino-Australian writer with four novels, six poetry books and two collections of short stories published, and ten dramatic works performed. She received Australia’s Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Philippine National Book Award for her novel Locust Girl. A Lovesong. Her other awards include the Prix Italia and the Australian Writers’ Guild Award for a play, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for poetry. Retired from 31 years of university teaching, she is Honorary Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University. She continues to pursue scholarly work underpinned by border thinking and to facilitate community arts projects. Originally from Bikol, which continues to inspire her creative and critical works, she now lives and writes on Ngunnawal Country (Canberra). In her new collection of short stories The Kindness of Birds, “Kindness cannot isolate. It moves both ways and all ways, like breath.”
