Treacheries and writs: this choir
once sang the Maid to her pyre.
Later they—by stage and pen—
slew Jeanne all over again.
#
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1:5.
Author: A.O.
Writer sometimes--- but only sometimes. In a love affair with truth.
aletheiaobservatory.wordpress.com
After 9 May
Some thoughts after the recently-concluded 2022 national elections.
The Marcos-Duterte victory
Mr. Bongbong Marcos and his running mate Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio won the recent elections by a landslide, and are set to take office as President and Vice President of the Philippines, respectively. They weren’t my choice, I didn’t vote for them, but their victory is a bare fact.
Explaining their victory will fall to others far wiser and more intelligent than me. Instead, I wanted to reflect on some things I learned from their supporters.
Even before elections on 9 May, I’d already thought about likely scenarios. The most likely outcome, I thought at the time, was a landslide Marcos-Duterte victory. I made peace with it as a possibility. Now I’ll have to make peace with it as a fact.
Continue reading “After 9 May”Icon (poem)
1521
Ay, we’ve seen so much in our life here on earth
of strange wonders, formed far from this land of our birth,
strange tongues, and manners— but we hadn’t yet seen
a foreign Prince come himself with his Mother, the Queen.
The pale strangers with them are spinning tales:
not the patter and palaver of a thousand previous sales
but news of their Hara, a virgin who conceived,
and their eternal Hari who was killed, and yet who lived.
Then spirit-touched Cristo and Maria in their turn
gaze at me: Ay, how their gazes burn!
We’ve come so far to see you, love, here at world’s end:
won’t you take us to your heart and home? Won’t you be our friend?
The strangers left so long ago. Some in battle died,
the rest ran to their fortress ships, sailing with the tide.
The Misa is forgotten, and fades from memory—
still Cristo and Maria came to build their home with me.
#
Because I meant to write something for the 500th anniversary of Christianity in the Philippines last year, but never had any clear ideas until now 😀
(Full description on DeviantArt)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Be careful out there! 🙂
-A.O.
The Secularization Movement (poem)
Pelaez at the chapter cites canon law and Trent,
chasing the trail of an argument
through tomes and memorials to a faraway throne:
The Church in these islands—a Church of our own.
At his parish, Gomes hurries to his Mass
like a student, a scholar eternally in class.
He turns to his townsfolk, his people, and sees
a purpose, a mission, his certainties.
Burgos is in his study, buried in books,
awake and too mindful of all the looks
cast his way from the shadows, and what they say:
Burgos is going to get his someday.
Tracing the breviary’s worn page,
Gomes sighs: a tiredness more than age
deep in his bones, he offers, looking up to the stars,
a holiness from ledgers and boxes of cigars.
#
Looooong description with historical context and stuff on DeviantArt 😀
Be careful out there! 🙂
-A.O.
Portrait In Yellow
What did the late President Noynoy Aquino’s legacy mean to me?
By now, much has been said about the late former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III since his passing. Hours of video and audio have been recorded, or spent making infographics or writing comments. Gallons of ink or saliva have been expended discussing the man and his presidency— a controversial topic at the best of times for any president, but in recent years, especially for him.
Much of it focused on his legacy: what his presidency accomplished, what it meant, what he left behind.
. . . What is a legacy?
It’s planting seeds seeds in a garden you never get to see
from the musical Hamilton
To the talking heads and swift-fingered graphic designers, it meant laws passed, erring officials charged or convicted, statistics, numbers. To his staff, it meant the moments they spent with him, their conversations. To his detractors, it was how they perceived him to have failed in his sworn duties.
To me, it means something else.
This isn’t sophisticated political analysis— not at all. This isn’t the lectern, but the peanut gallery, the cheap seats where democracy lives. And this is what I think “the Aquino legacy” means.
Continue reading “Portrait In Yellow”Wish Upon A Star (poem)
Of starlight, here’s what I know:
in untold millions they glow
in the night for us—and then
they’re gone. The sky’s new again.
From the ether may I shine
like starlight someday: a sign
and smile for an hour of doubt
long, long after I’ve burned out.
#
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Words 3.0 License
Be careful out there! 🙂
-A.O.
Gunita (poem)
Like a nameless seaborne storm,
this nameless tale took name and form:
the moments, weeks, and months that groan
under the weight of a life that isn’t their own.
Like the rush before Valentine’s
I charged in, heedless of all the signs
and found, beyond the smiles and laughter,
nothing—no tears, just silence after.
#
Gunita – Tagalog, “memory” or “recollection.” Yeah, the title’s in a different language than the poem. People can do that 😀
(Full description on DeviantArt)
Creative Commons Atrribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Be careful out there 🙂
-A.O.
Hoping (poem)
Fairy tales we told ourselves
from old books on dusty shelves
glow wisp-like on distant shores:
Come, let’s reach for them once more!
#
(Insert description longer than the actual poem here 😀 )
The substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.
As a body without a spirit is dead, so is faith without deeds.
(full description on DeviantArt)
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Be careful out there 🙂
-A.O.
Unfinished Revolution (poem)
We heard the song faintly on the King of Spain’s road:
the army and the nation, bound by multiplex of code,
marching forward, fast, followed by the unseen hallowed dead,
to the noonday sun, bright and hot and revolution red—
a shrill, discordant harmony, fraying at the seams,
’til stumbling, and faltering, and losing its steam
it died down to embers flinging their gripes
and grudges at the eagle and the stars and stripes.
I heard the song more clearly on the busy avenue,
dusty and dirty and all brand new.
A tale cut into place like an old record’s grooves:
the people, together, again on the move
to a hymn both ancient and never out of style
twinkling and flashing like Our Lady’s smile—
and the song was there, so long ago, an apparition fair,
but when I turned to look for it, it wasn’t anywhere.
#
In the Philippines, the anniversary of the 1986 People Power Revolution (a.k.a. the EDSA Revolution or EDSA 1) is commemorated on 25 February. Those heady, tense days when the people, clutching rosaries, fragrant garlands, and food for the exhausted government troops, held Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) and peacefully toppled the dictator Marcos . . . (Full description on DeviantArt)
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Be careful out there! 🙂
-A.O.
Waiting (poem)
Waiting for my task
I gaze north in wonder. Sigh:
No kundiman here.
_____
Description from DeviantArt:
(Insert description longer than the actual poem here haha)
Sometimes you join or sign up for things, and find out that you might’ve made a mistake, and maybe you’re not meant to be there at all. That’s fine. Mistakes can be corrected 🙂 No, I didn’t decide to go up to the mountains and join the bandits. I know I do a lot of silly things, but that’s just too nonsensical for me. Counter-productive too.
Kundiman refers to traditional Filipino love songs, the kind that young men would serenade (harana) their ladyloves with. It’s said that on the level of subtext, kundimans are patriotic songs. So it is with “Jocelynang Baliwag,” one of the most well-known examples, which was quite popular with the revolutionaries in the late nineteenth century, which was given the appellation “the Music of the Legitimate Kundiman that Proceeds from the Insurgents’ Camp.”
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Be careful out there 🙂
-A.O.
P.S.
Happy New Year, friends! I hope everyone had a nice holiday for Christmas and New Year, despite everything. May God bless us this year, so that we might be our best, true heroic selves.
Aletheia Observatory 