English
Filipino
Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon (Journeys, Junctions)
Rio Alma with Marne Kilates, translator
Anvil Publishing, c2008
196 pages
A collection culled from Rio Alma’s last ten poetry books that individually and invariably include a poem or a group of poems on places where the poet has traveled. Among these poems, too, might be felt most the characteristic tension between home and destination, the past and the present, and the febrile twilight in-between where the poet-traveler finds himself. And because Rio Alma is Rio Alma, the persona in these poems of wandering, sometimes of displacement and alienation, is always Filipino.
(Photo courtesy of Anvil Publishing)
* * * * *
Huling Gabi sa Nanjing
Umuulan maghapon.
Pauwi mula sa Tian Gong,
Nalingon ko sa sanga ng lu-tong
Ang nakasilip
Na buwang paliit.
Rio Alma
23 Oktubre 1985
* * * * *
Last Night in Nanjing
All day it was raining.
On the way back from Tian Gong,
I gazed back
At the fading moon
Behind a branch of lu-tong.
trans. Marne Kilates
3 November 2006