Duties (or, The Privileged View of Travel Poems)
for Cirilo Bautista, who crafted a most patriotic Filipino piece,
"Written In Stratford Upon Avon"

 

Dear Filipino reader. I write from a resort bench satisfying needs:
I shall tell you where you stand, what your future is, what's past.
I, poet, am Poet, after all. Superhero word-cruncher, lingo-belter,
egos' ego; e.g., I'll tell you the comfort of distance over Moscow's

cobblestones¹, an amity of spirits somewhere in Europe², and that
quite quite home LA or Vancouver (or anywhere)³, and hopefully
you'll read 'em. I know you even envy stories about Boracay or the
Baguio you've yet to see; I know it has always been your impulse
to know about foreign lands for escape; so this my new place piece

promises you worlds. Travel after all lets me see myself, how lucky
I've been, how poor my people are, how provincial us poets remain.

 

 

—Mindoro Island

 

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¹refers to a place poem by Marne Kilates, "Kiev," which while it brings the Pinoy reader to a distant land's own past horror, ultimately wakens him up to a realization of a pacifying lesson in distance and our us-ness' neutrality instead of the usual pattern of giving readers a facile local political parallel.

²in reference to a piece by Alfred Yuson, "Knife In The Adriatic," which struck me as a discourse on that duality containing alienation's blind alleys and the matutinal familiarity of belonging.

³alluding to a piece by Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta, "Flowing On," which consciously claims worthy citizenship in the world. Does this have a patriotic, or "expansionist," overtone?

 

 

 

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