SWELLS, SOURCES, AND SPRINGS

Ahead of the vision rose

and began what became

later for us the dreaming.

Dreams then soon stirred

legend. Legend fractured

after into our oral history.

What ease for our history

then, creases deep, crests

high, thicker and bleaker

than your brows, had there

been scripts of your pleas,

remains of your fatal feral

spirits, the untamed river

sprites, streaming creeks

of seared ink, secret ways

and footpaths that reveal

only to us with sure sheen

the clarity of your speech,

bestowed maps and charts

for us to trace your desires,

for your lost songs to rest

firmly into our memory,

to be fixed back into these

isles where—for load, fill,

burden, or yoke, bondage

and unrest, chains of lead,

lines of leashes, long iron

fetters of spite—they stole

you, sold for a few pieces

not even of gold, snatched

captive from these seaside

towns, from these foothill

clefts, they were to escape

from, run away with haste,

and hoist their beaten sails

by unreasoned rush, quick

to sprint and swift to flee,

without having to confess

any crime or simply to ask

for our pardon, that what

they did to us was merely

for mercy, blessing, charity,

that for you and all others

after you, everything was

for greed, for glut, and for

storm, where they swear

one day to return to, bolder

and braver, stronger back

to these emerald shores,

once their fire and forces

are restored, to take whole

the lot, and to replace these

islands with their sickness,

their rot, that they neither

once quite freed from, got

fully rid of, nor far forgot.

*

How could they neglect,

even forget so certainly,

ever so easily, the isles,

the archipelago, the vital

living waters, the shores,

the mirrors of our origin.

Now lesions. Now sores.

The wound they thought

you were worth, weighed

not in wealth, but burned

in words, written scarred

white on our brown skin,

to unseat your hard-won

feats, tattoos of intricacy,

these ornate patterns you

earned by punctured pain

or pierced plans of flairs,

now buried as cut of loot,

under-skin as a plunder’s

roll, as indices of spoils

for plunderers to tick off,

or to cross away later for

other thieving tasks, now

seared memory, and now

a metonymy for the stains

on our rich green terrains,

on highland lush, scented

piles of herbs, of mineral

ores, the coasts bountiful

with nectar orbs, honeyed

fruits, of sundried spices,

of sprays and surfs, water

zests, of the endless wind,

of riverbends, wild beasts

roaming, of ancient spirits

wilder. So grave, so grim,

so sweet were once these

life-giving, soul-satiating

swells and springs of pain.

*

Burden of innocence: you

knew these waters would

swallow you whole, sink

down without any residue

your heart. So, by spring

of luck, or a leap of fate,

you took chance, ever so

slim, ever deadly the risk

of sinking deep, to jump

on board, and took barely

what few you could: fair

scraps of your few shirts,

one chosen for sleeping,

one sheer for days under

the sun, scorching heavy,

through on-deck works.

And finally, you lodged

in your throat the songs—

the rings and the rhymes

that your ancestors dead

once owned, now openly

free to croon and to haunt

in your bones. How holy,

how broken the beautiful,

how sad were the sounds

as you pressed some lean

verse after another verse,

packed away, stowed out

of hearing, into your past.

*

The cook accusing you of stealing bread:

Of course, it was a lie. Pushed to hard work

you brushed windowpanes without meals,

chewed your rain-soaked shirt, and sucked

water and sweat to feed your weary frame.

Sweet wine of bodily strength disappears.

Down on the floorboards, you grew grim

into a man, forgot the sounds of whistling

wind, how paper kites lift, bask in smell

of pandan, of freshly steamed white rice,

how dew drops gather in breaking dawns

and explode a thousand suns, sugar-crisp

on the tip of your tongue, how not to stray

away from the long-worn treaded tracks,

how to touch rough green summer grass.

*

The open sea, an escape

so few only would take:

mist spraying over ship

hull, blisters and dreams

of the islands, promises

of your horizon hidden

in blue. You knew well

of star-charts, but not of

sea-maps. Cargoes you

alone carry within: You

were too young to hold

on tight, to pull the coils

of the sailing masts, too

short to see past vapors,

to perceive these ropes

of hope, your heart was

still small, still too pure,

too raw and ever so new

to behold a blue future,

to be beholden beyond

the curves of tomorrow. 

*

Ship to a new port and down the planks

walk upright your new self, a new man.

Wooden boards squeaked upon your gait.

No more the devil restless in your steps,

or youth unbridled with hair wind-swept

from a run. The shadows hurried distant

beyond the hills. Thickened into leather

from years under ocean suns, your skin,

once of morning earth, like paper sheets,

now glistens loneliest under full moons

and oil lamps. You, too, will soon return

to flight. To wind, light as a paper kite.

*

In aching depths, your heart

the water swallowed. There,

the yearning stayed. Away

from the islands, you never

found your way back home.

But words and verses still

call. The dead, in cool air,

on clear nights, also sings.

They sing of the wild birds,

of a slice of a sun shining

through leaves. They sing

of rain passing over islands.

They all sing of your haste.

Sing the swiftness of youth.

They sing of loss, of unease.

They sing this new disease

and of these fretting wounds.

They sing of lights spinning.

They sing of the open seas.

They sing these faces. They

sing the liquid spells. They

sing of the white salt. They

sing of mornings and your

need for silence. They sing

dreaming of the wild spices.

Sing deep of kindly songs,

the sparkling springs, river

swells, rich green fills, lush

highland streams, of vibrant

fruits, of the welling waves,

of the ebbing flows, of live

lava sparks, of the breathing

embers of the dying bonfire,

of root coils, of the blissful

river twists, of water swirls,

of footwells in lower tides,

of shallow runs, of oceans,

of deeps, of songs, of sweet

rolling sounds of your pain.

*

Yes, I wait, certainly most,

for you. Under naked grits

of the sky, the stone gems

in the water, in my nightly

swim and in the daily seep

of morning shallow streams,

I wait for you. In my dreams

of the dark and in the depths

of my sleep, I pause for you

patiently. I steep soaking in

plain rains. How long had I

been alone, a single disciple

of my own solitude, the sole

attendant to my solid grief?

From the hot winds, I drink

every vision of your arrival

inevitable. I swallow whole

my hunger for you. Beneath

the gaudy greens of mango

trees, I anticipate the falling

of golden buds. How I stall

and forestall my ever long

thirst and longings for you.

And I can all well foretell

in aching winds the divine

coming of the full eruption,

your ruptures and breaches

as revelations in my mouth.

I cut my skin fresh to allow

the sap of my care and my

repair to leak sugar-thick,

down on my arms, drip all

unmovable. Bloody thirst!

I ripen and swell. I endure

and quell all my yearnings

for you. I press and squeeze

into my open wound sours

of lime. I crush my lesions

anew to stay awake for you.

I stand wet, blanched white,

fresh under the monsoons.

I eagerly listen for that tell,

that slanted sound of wind,

that sad call of birds, that

croon of wild beasts, those

whistles of the mad future.

I sit still at the end of my

waiting, edge of the land,

beginnings of the eternity

and the sea. I keep songs

inside of me, too. I break

and linger as I sing alone,

lost as I finger my pulses

for you. I wait and I bask

under the sun, like death

manifest, rotting for you.

However long the delays

of days may persist, I stay

starved and ever vicious

for you, as ever famished

in my miseries, as greedy

for my memories of you.

Come pull and pluck me

from the brittle branches.

Ravish and wreck me red.

Gut me ravenous and raw.

I cling as the dead-weight

overripe fruit, all swollen,

all festering sweet for you.

Note

The short poetry sequence “Swells, sources, and springs” responds to what Resil B. Mojares, the Philippine National Artist for Literature, refers to as the “sudden shock” and “dislocation” that a colonized subject must, could, and/or would undergo, that “leav[es] the body derelict and disoriented” after a “long colonial period as a ‘dark age’ that separated a people from their roots in the past” (300). This form of colonial trauma, of displacement and of uprootedness, is not only evident and prevalent during the period of occupation and in the exact moment of subjugation, but also persists residually as a “structure of feeling” (Williams 121–7) through generations, where, once a momentary corruption, is now embedded organically, like an affliction, in the fabric of one’s personal history and in the membrane of the collective memory and of the national imagination.

References

The Grove
ISSN: 1137-005X
32
Num.
Año. 2025

SWELLS, SOURCES, AND SPRINGS

Jeffrey B. Javier
Faculty, Department of Humanities University of the Philippines Mindanao,Filipinas