“Pet” / “Aso sa Tabi” featured on Modern Poetry in Translation website

My poem, “Pet” (Filipino original “Aso sa Tabi”) has been featured on the Modern Poetry in Translation website (UK). My copy of the issue arrived safely in the post recently and it looks amazing.

I translated four of my own poems and two from a good poet friend back home, Noel Romero del Prado.

CLICK HERE to get to the Modern Poetry in Translation website.

Mangangaso – subok-salin ng “Hunter” ni Bjork

MANGANGASO
mula sa Homogenic ni Bjork

Kung paghahanap ang paglalakbay
At natagpuan na ang tahanan

Hindi ako hihinto

Hahayo ako upang mangaso
Ako ang mangangaso
Mag-uuwi ako ng yaman
Ngunit ‘di ko alam kung kailan

Akala ko kay daling ilatag ang kalayaan
Ay, tunay akong Scandinavian
Nahulaan mo agad, ano?

Naamoy mo iyon
Kaya mag-isa akong iniwan
Upang wakasan ang pakay
Ngayon lilisanin ko ang lahat

Hahayo ako upang mangaso
Ako ang mangangaso

(Hindi mo lang ako kilala!)

(Hindi mo lang ako kilala)
-o-

HUNTER
from Homogenic by Bjork

If travel is searching
and home has been found

I’m not stopping

I’m going hunting
I’m the hunter
I’ll bring back the goods
but I don’t know when

I thought I could organise freedom
how Scandinavian of me
you sussed it out, didn’t you?

You could smell it
so you left me on my own
to complete the mission
now I’m leaving it all behind

I’m going hunting
I’m the hunter

(You just didn’t know me!)

(You just didn’t know me)
-o-

Alas dos ng madaling araw dito sa Cape Town, pasado alas siyete ng umaga sa lupang kinagisnan.  Hindi pa ako dinadapuan ng tulog.  Kakaibang-kakaiba ang pagdiriwang ng Bagong Taon dito.  Mas tahimik.  Madalas ang ingay ng kasiyahan ay kakambal ng di-mabilang na bote ng alak.  Hindi paputok ang kinatatakutan kundi ang mga lasing na nagpipilit magmaneho.

Pero hindi iyan ang gusto kong sabihin ngayon.  Tinapos ko ang pagsasalin na sinimulan ko noong isang linggo.  Hindi ko alam kung may ibang interesado bukod sa bagong kaibigang dumadalaw ngayon dito, pero sana magkapanahon akong buuin ang pagsasalin ng lahat ng mga akda ni Bjork – ang isa sa pinakamalaking impluwensya ko mula noong lumipat ako rito sa Timog Afrika.  Ang iba pang natagpuan kong mga bagong kakambal-kaluluwa ay sina Nina Simone, Daniel Lanois, Tom McRae, Arvo Part at Stephan Micus.  Hindi ko maipaliwanag kung bakit.

At muntik ko nang makalimutan.  MAPAYAPA AT MAPAGPALAYANG BAGONG TAON!  2011 na at ilalathala na ang aking dalawang bagong aklat!!!!

Lahat ay Puno ng Pag-ibig, subok-salin ng “All is Full of Love” ni Bjork

LAHAT AY PUNO NG PAG-IBIG
mula sa Homogenic ni Bjork — isang subok-salin

pagkakalooban ka ng pag-ibig
may kakalinga sa iyo
pagkakalooban ka ng pag-ibig
pagtiwalaan mo

baka hindi magbukal
sa iyong pinagbuhusan

baka hindi sa panig
kung saan ka nakatitig

lumingun-lingon ka
nakapaligid sa iyo
lahat ay puno ng pag-ibig
nakapaligid sa iyo

lahat ay puno ng pag-ibig
hindi mo lamang tinatanggap
lahat ay puno ng pag-ibig
wala sa himlayan ang iyong telepono
lahat ay puno ng pag-ibig
pinid lamang ang iyong mga pinto

lahat ay puno ng pag-ibig
-o-

ALL IS FULL OF LOVE
from Homogenic by Bjork

you’ll be given love
you’ll be taken care of
you’ll be given love
you have to trust it

maybe not from the sources
you have poured yours into

maybe not from the directions
you are staring at

twist your head around
it’s all around you
all is full of love
all around you

all is full of love
you just ain’t receiving
all is full of love
your phone is off the hook
all is full of love
your doors are all shut

all is full of love
-o-

Not everyone I know is Christian or believes in a single religion.  And Bjork may not even know (or care) that I have tried a translation of her song, but this little attempt to put it into words I grew up is like building a new bridge.

Language as a Shield, Translation as a Bridge

A professor I had a long time ago, the great poet Benilda S. Santos, once asked me if I found using a second language – English in this case – helped me in any way in expressing certain thoughts and emotions better than my mother tongue.  Back then such a question didn’t really make sense to me.  I was writing in whatever language the poem came.  Or so I declared.

Through the years I started to write some poems in both languages at almost the same time – jumping back and forth, testing the limits of expression in each.  Sometimes I found it necessary to use one language to release ideas and images that the other could not quite capture easily.  I would then translate those parts.  But then I also found that there are some subjects that needed some kind of distancing in order for me to even attempt to tackle them.

The death of my father was one of them.  Perhaps because instinctively I knew that using the very language that I grew up with will rebound even harsher on me.  With using a second language I am somehow afforded a kind of shield, a layer of protection from that which might hit me too hard that I wouldn’t be able to finish the task.

I have to admit that I am a fairly slow reader.  I had a friend back in high school who claimed he could speed read.  He seemed to me like one of those contraptions in an office:  the grand paper shredder.  In goes the sheet, out come paper spaghetti.  Words disposed in a jiffy.  He read A Tale of Two Cities in a week.  I only managed the first half by the end of the semester.

A few weeks ago I chanced upon the slim book Shadow Child by Dutch author PF Thomese.  Written in vignettes, it tells of the loss he and his wife have had to endure when their baby died.  It is a small book but with such devastating power that leaves the reader gasping.  It made me wish I could read it in the original and then translate it into Filipino.  But that exercise (aside from the fact that I only know a few words of Dutch) might be too awesome an experience.

Perhaps it is enough that I have somehow reached the shore by another bridge, that second language of English.  Who knows, maybe one day I can learn enough Dutch and make my own bridge?  Then again, one could ask “Does grief sell?  Isn’t there enough of that in the world?”

Opposites are essential.  You know one thing because of another.  Dry cracked earth that runs in a path is the memory of a river that once rushed.  Burst of sunlight, whip of lightning and storm.

-o-

GUD Magazine Issue 3

GUD Magazine Issue 3 published one of my poems, “Sa Bawat Digma” / “In Every War.”  Here is a link to Johann Carlisle’s review at Future Fire that mentions the poem.  The Fix reviewer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz also takes note of it.

It is a fantastic magazine – and I am not saying that because they accepted this particular poem and one other in a forthcoming issue.  GUD Magazine is a unique experiment in its print and digital formats.  You won’t regret getting hold of an issue.