‘as wind skitters’ (my tanka adjudged ‘excellent’ in the 7th International Tanka Festival Competition)
My tanka adjudged ‘excellent’ among others well-known in the tanka sphere:
as wind skitters
through dry sedge
this thought
of shredded feathers
persistent
dry grass at English Bay, West End, Vancouver, BC
…at The 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012 by Japan Tanka Poets’ Society, with 589 entries from all over the world that passed through the four judges: Jane Reichhold (U. S. A.), Beverley George (Australia), Yasuhiro Kawamura (Japan), and Aya Yuhki (Japan). Another tanka was adjudged ‘fine’.
CONGRATULATIONS to many friends in the terrific harvest!!!
dawn, a bilingual poem in English and Iluko for One Shot Wednesday (re-post)
In the spirit of first anniversaries that One Shot Wednesday is celebrating, I wish to share an exhilarating moment I’ve had when my poem in Iluko, the dialect I was born with but never wrote with until now, was published, my first ever in the dialect, in Bannawag, a vernacular magazine of the Ilocanos in northern Philippines I read as a child.
Writing from the spirit for me is true writing. While I’m re-learning my tongue like a child, I find in it each time the soul of my expression. The source of my anguish must be its imprisonment in the tangled web of borrowed thought and language. But kneading them together now as in this poem has allowed me bouts of sheer joy. I seem to be writing through this ‘duality’ since then–the borrowed cultures or cultures that impinged on my birth or even in my mother’s womb. And my anguish has lessened since I acknowledged who I am and of what I’m woven.
(as featured poem in winningwriters.com Newsletter, Spring 2010, a loose translation in English by the author with some nuances substituted as in some verbs, which in Iluko already imply a subject, and nouns that need no adjectives)
startled,
stars fell in the dark
among leaves
pining over lost suns–
loves
that light birthed
drowned in the roar of the
faithless
unbidden
a freeze crept,
swaddling
the newborn
leaves whirled
onto a fractured cloud,
stars splattered, blinding
the lost
jasmine blossoms
curtsied
as if penitent
shedding their petals
in the palm
of the newborn blossoms
bloomed into a garland for
dawn
(Iluko version as edited and published in Bannawag, the Ilocano vernacular magazine of the Ilocos region in northern Philippines, May 16, 2009)
agsapa
dagiti bituen idi mangngegda
ti as-asug
dagiti bulong iti sipnget
dagiti pinatanor ti lawag
iti danarudor
dagiti agam-ammangaw
awan pakpakada
ti yuuli ti lam-ek
kadagiti di pay nabungon
a kaipasngay
nagkaribuso
dagiti nayaplag a bulong
bayat ti isasangpet
ti ulep a makapurar
nagkurno
dagiti hasmin
kas man la agpakpakawan
narurosda
iti ima
ti maladaga
nagbukelda a kuentas
ti agsapa
Copyright (c) 2010 by Alegria Imperial
Re-post from 9/22/2010 for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimtable gathering place for poets and artists that celebrates its First Anniversary today (tomorrow?) Wednesday! I joined in only halfway in November last year after I stumbled on it in patteran’s page. It’s been a blast to get to know the most amazing, the most talented, and gifted poets and artists here. Check us out!
Shuffled seasons (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Greg Laychak
The narrow aisle flows a river to a wall
Of white thought
What squares of light have no glow
On the surface of water?
Who spawns the flat bed of dreams my steps
Struggle to cover?
Imprisoned by air I breathe a stale paradise
Of jasmine blossoms
I hear the rain a hissing of limbs on trees
But the moon does not rise
Day ends at my door night turns the stars
Upside down
‘”Where is your walker?” “Excuse moi?” What tongue
Speaks in this land?
“You cannot leave without it?” “Why, who’s heading out?”
The grubs I picked wriggle
In my closed fist I am growing a butterfly
No one knows
In my bareness I feel drenched in dew my bones
Misaligned rattle
“Now let’s go back in.” “Who has left her?”
No one comes today
I draw a caul on the day withdraw into night
Retrieve what’s lost
The sign posts melt on the flowing river
My hair long undone
I shuffle the seasons: in my eyes autumn leaves fall
But cherry blossoms
Oh, he rises to me my cane I draw my arms a lover
Now my wings
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Written with an image prompt by Greg Laychak for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Share with us as we do ours your art or poetry and your thoughts. Check us out.
plea for a poem (for One Shot Wednesday)
write me a poem
words to breathe in
even if only whispers
as shouts have turned
the air into a
hail storm
write me some rain–
my heart crackles
in the draught longing
for words drenched in
thought to sip
in the dark
i yearn for verses
snipped from flame tips
words that dance
the fire of fallen angels
saved from their march
on dying coals
write me a song
cadenced in sunsets
tympanis of words
rising off the hum
of meanings
drums have flattened
give me back poems
shredded spirits birth
in caves midnights cleanse–
poems howling wolves
hankering for stars
divine
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry as my share in a lively exchange of art and poetry among a loving community of poets and artists who nurture each other. Follow us at the site. Click on OSP on my blogroll.
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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