Ang Kalatas November 2017 Issue | Page 6

ONE MOMENT IN TIME

Sonatina

( from Ruben Darío and Alfredo Roces )
La princesa está triste ... ¿ Qué tendrá la princesa ?
Los suspiros se escapan de su boca de fresa ,
que ha perdido la risa , que ha perdido el color .
La princesa está pálida en su silla de oro ,
... y en un vaso , olvidada , se desmaya una flor1 .
— Ruben Darío
The flower has become A pair of broken straws , the vase A soda bottle , What gurgle of emptiness echoed , When you sipped The last drop of sweetened water ?
Behind you , the gray College , monastic in its bareness : The nuns , so far From your grief — what decades Can they count On the Sorrowful Mysteries ?
Listen , the world is no longer So simple . It is no respecter Of tenderness . Ripening , It crumples like a fruit . Prepare yourself . Sorrows past Are sorrows still to come .
— Marne L . Kilates September 24 , 2007

A poet takes flight on three of my paintings

HOW delightful to have a poet extract the juice from some of my paintings .
By ALFREDO ' DING ' ROCES
Poet Marne Kilates has reacted to my blog on eight paintings with three insightful poems on three of them .
A communications consultant , his third collection of poems entitled Mostly Monsson Weather was released by UP Press .
Marne and I are comrades at my old hangout , Banggaan .
His blogsite : marnek . blogspot . com . •
ALFREDO ROCES is an artist , photojournalist , and book author living in the Sydney suburb of Davidson ; an octogenarian who in retirement continues to love life and to capture its wonder with his paint brush , his camera , and his words . Roces has opened his ‘ gallery archive ’ to AK NewsMagazine for readers to follow and enjoy each month .

Recollections of Paradise

In my memory , green bottles Meant oil or medicine kept by grandmothers For that slight fever or bout Of indigestion , perhaps from eating Too many guavas filched from the neighbor ’ s tree At the other side of the fence ; Or for that sprain after a rough game , Or for herself , her swollen knees And elbows : it meant a soothing liniment . Or this bottle . Inside , a miniature Tableau of the suffering Christ And the grieving Mother ( and John , And the Magdalene ?): Did he remember Paradise Before he thought for a moment He had been abandoned by the Father ?
Or was it the Paradise he promised The repentant thief whose copy Is nowhere to be seen in this bottle ?
We had similar bottles at the other altar Grandmother kept in another part of the house , Not at the main shrine of the Sacred Heart That watched over our household . They contained sacred oils blessed By the Spanish priest at the Paschal hour , ( Beside the blackened statue of San Roque With his faithful dog beside him , A piece of bread in his mouth ), Old sacramentals like the faded novenas Replaced by prayer books and scapulars With words in English . We did not have This icon bottle . I thought of guavas ,
I see apples ( and one glass marble ), In this Filipino Catholic still life . What Have we replaced in our old faith ? What have we given up ? A Paradise Remembered in still another tongue , Like our faith of Sundays , Our innocence of catechumens , The scent of apples , a game of marbles , The liniment of holy oil that our grandmothers Rubbed us with to hasten our convalescence ? What ails us ? What is the name Of our disease ? Because we cannot utter it , It is something we cannot conjure or cure . It is the memory before this Paradise That is the darkness of our soul .
— Marne L . Kilates September 25 , 2007
06 NOVEMBER 2017 | AK NewsMagazine , Vol 8 No 2 www . kalatas . com . au