Unabashed (a sparrow speaks in three tongues)
unabashed–
a sparrow speaks in three tongues
twirling on willow twigs
It’s the subject of my post yesterday but I can’t seem to let it go! “My soul speaks in three languages” as in the three tanka I wrote from English, which I translated roughly into Spanish (and had it edited by Sr. Javier Galvan y Guijo, director of Instituto Cervantes in Oran, Algeria formerly of Manila where we met) and in Iluko, is an awarness that has been consuming me–this composing of words from three different dimensions that I believe are of my soul but not finding the right stage to unleash it, let it leap, dance, sing, sigh.
Finally, last month I dared to submit three tanka in three tongues to qarrtsiluni–an online literary journal where I’ve been reading awesome poetry–with an introductory essay I had posted here about the “willow” not having an equivalent in Iluko, the tongue I was born with. The editors accepted it, an honor I’m still riding on an upwind.
Unabashed, I would like to share here what Alex Cigale, translation theme editor, said as well as Jean who posted her comment on the qarrtsiluni site, and Patrick who sent it to my inbox. I hope you, dear readers, bear with me in this moment of exhilaration!
Alex Cigale (editor, translation issue, qarrtsiluni) January 12, 2011 at 4:35 pm | #1
What a treasure you sent our way, Alegria! So perfect for us, this window onto a language constructed according to logical grammatic structures that are yet so different from those we otherwise take for granted, qualities such as number, possession, direction, tense, intensity. And what a perfect illustration of the notion that there can be no words that do not represent real objects, so that such culturally-specific idioms are nearly ICONS, your example: “saning-i … portrays … usually a woman in a dark corner, splayed on the floor….” And the recording, the Iluko sounded last and thus echoing so musically, its music so liquid I am tempted to imagine that it was formed among the various sounds of water surrounding the islands. A big thank you!
Jean (tastingrhubarb)
January 13, 2011 at 6:47 am | #3
Oh, these are exquisite and exquisitely satisfying! Listening to the podcast is essential. This is a richness of experience of poetry and language and translation that no publication with only printed words could provide. So beautiful.
Patrick Gillespie (poemshape)
January 13, 2011, 7:14 PM
Finally, I get to hear your beautiful language. Such is the beauty of the language that I could fool myself into thinking that anyone who spoke it would write poetry such as yours. I have always loved the sound of the Mongolian Language, but I think Iluko is just as alluring and beautiful. I would love to speak it.
It’s also beautiful to see how you bring the sensibility of haiku into your longer poems. It’s something I’ve wondered about trying myself, but haven’t yet. Again, how wonderful to hear Iluko. There’s a Japanese expression which I can’t think of right now. It expresses the aesthetic of beautiful sorrow or beautiful sadness. Your poetry is so often imbued with it.
January 14, 2011 Posted by alee9 | culturati news/views, haiku, language views, poetry, tanka | alegria imperial, Daily life, Daily wage, English, iluko, Instituto Cervantes, Javier Galvan y Guijo, jornales, Manila, Oran, Parick Gillespie, podcast, poemshape, poetry, qarrtsiluni, Spanish, tanka, tastingrhubarb, translation, willow | 7 Comments
dawn and qarrtsiluni
dawn–
the Sierra Madres peaks
burst in pink
in the bamboo grove
shadows shed off the night–
dawn
glinting–
puddles in rice fields
at dawn
each step
on rice paddies
dawn unfurls
their blush regained–
frangipanis at dawn
It’s a glorious sight from the balcony of Angeles Estates where I stay when I used to travel north from Manila, and on the highways in Nueva Ecija, the Philippines’ central plains. Dawn has always been my time of day though not as much when I moved to this other side of the hemisphere. On rare mornings though, I catch dawn on tips of conifers–the same pink purple though often with hints of red as I’ve waken to as a child.
Why am I talking of dawn today? Because I feel a new morning just risen, figuratively, with the publication of my three tanka in three languages, English, Spanish and Iluko on http://qarrtsiluni.com (click on my blogroll, too). It comes with a podcast of my reading. You may wish to check it out.
January 13, 2011 Posted by alee9 | haiku, poetry | alegria imperial, bamboo grove, blush, central plains, conifers, dawn, English, figuratively, frangipanis, haiku, haiku moment, iluko, jornales, Nueva Ecija, Philippines, puddles, rice fields, rice paddies, shadows, Sierra Madres, Spanish, tanka | Leave a comment
la luna blanca/white moon/puraw a sellag(a tri-lingual lyric poem)
…tri-lingual in English, Spanish and Iluko, the language (dialect) I was born with and as I keep saying whenever I post one that I wrote with it, hardly spoke and never written with from my early teens when I moved to the city for university until two years ago when it reawakened first in a yahoo group and later in a website I stumbled upon. Iluko of the nothernmost edge of the Philippine archipelago traces its roots to Austronesian languages. Like most of the major Philippine dialects (87 of them not counting sub-tongues), Iluko tends to be metaphorical and thus, poetic. Melded in its spirit is Spanish not only as a language but a culture and a soul–both of which we, Filipinos but specifically Ilokanos, can hardly discern on the conscious level. English sort of flowed in only in the past century. I believe that when I write I do so from three cultures uniquely one, uniquely mine.
This song again is for Margaret Dornaus at haikudoodle to whom I promised I would share and to my new ‘family’ at One Stop Poetry blog.
1.
la luna blanca
white moon
pimmuraw a sellag
rising in the east
a patch on my shadowed
wedding veil
rimsua idiay daya
anniniwan iti narusingan
a belo ti trahe de bodak
en la bahía
on the bay
iti baybay
white moon melts on ripples
its path on halved waters
we braid our hands
ti pimmuraw a bulan malunlunag iti ayus
agdalliasat kadigiti birri ti danum
nagsillapid dagiti dakulapta
un velo bordado
an embroidered veil
bordado a belo
mira mi cara blanca
la imagen de una noche solitaria
un corazón vacío
look on my white face
the reflection of a solitary night
an empty heart
miraem ti pimmusyaw a rupak
kaas-asping ti rabii nga agmaymaysa
kawaw a puso
2.
la luna blanca
white moon
puraw a sellag
sets at midday
wraps me in a cloud
invisible in blue
nalned ti tengga’t aldaw
binungonnak ti ulep
pinukawnak iti mara-azul
un brillo en los árboles
a sheen in the trees
guilap dagiti kay-kayo
returns at ebb tide
creeps to my bed
stays
nagsubli iti malem
kimmaradap iti nakaidlepak
nagtlana
un blanco sueño
a white dream
puraw a darepdep
se decolora en un beso
caído como rocío en las rosas
un cielo rosado
fades into a kiss
falls as dew on the roses
a pink sky
pimmusyaw nga agek
natnag kas linna-aw kadagiti rosas
ti derosas a langit
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
December 1, 2010 Posted by alee9 | lyric poetry, poetry | alegria imperial, Austronesian, English, haikudoodle, iluko, iluko website, jornales, la luna blanca, Margaret Dornaus, metaphorical, One Shot Wednesday, One Stop Poetry blog, Philippine archipelago, poetic, song, Spanish, tri-lingual, white moon, yahoo group | 16 Comments
la luna blanca (not-quite haiku) for Margaret
Re-post from July 20, 2009 for Margaret as I mentioned in a conversation on Lorca, his “la luna blanca” poems, my own Spanish-entrenched culture, and my own caged, wounded but singing heart! I realize now that these are not quite haiku. I hope you enjoy it.
1.
la luna blanca
llores en mi corazon
el silencio en la aula
(white moon
weeps in my heart–
the muted cage)
2.
los ruisenores
mosca en la noche blanca
deje heridas
(nightingales
fly into the white night
leaving wounds behind)
Listening to Julio Iglesias, I was suddenly composing these haiku in Spanish! I feel like winning the lotto! But I can’t reward myself with a million dollar “jornal”–that would not match the value of joy (alegria!!!), which, of course, is priceless. I’ll say for these haiku, I pay myself $1000.
November 29, 2010 Posted by alee9 | language views, lyric poetry, poetry | alegria imperial, jornales, Julio Iglesias, la luna blanca, Lorca, lyric poetry, muted cage, nightingales, poetry, ruisenores, Spanish, white moon | 6 Comments
leaf in the garden (la hoja en el jardin)
leaf in the garden
only the wind can lift it up
or leave it to its fate
la hoja en el jardin
solamente el viento lo puede levantar
o seguira en su destino
Translation with the help of Rosy Dunnings (traduccion con ayuda de Rosy Dunnings)
October 9, 2010 Posted by alee9 | haiku, poetry | destino, el viento, fate, garden, la hoja, leaf, Spanish | 2 Comments
About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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