REMEMBERING THE DISAPPEARED

by CHERYL L. DAYTEC-YANGOT

Jonas Burgos. James Balao. Karen Empeno. Sherilyn Cadapan. 

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The list is long. And as one more day is added to The Queen Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s stolen term, it will become longer. 

We remember them today. The Desaparecidos. The Disappeared. They are all over the Philippines. They are all over the world. They come in different colors. They have different mothers. But they are all the same.

They are victims of oppressive states. 

They are The Disappeared. 

Today is the International Day for the Desaparecidos. This is their day. 

This is our day, too. A day for us to remember more than any other day that we must work hard. Still. Harder than we used to. Before The List Gets Longer. 

I am sharing a poem I wrote after reading Raymond Manalo’s account of his and his brother’s torture in the hands of Philippine state security forces.

Pledge of Rage (To Sherilyn and Karen)

You are not forgotten

When the chesnut wind blows
Every father is tormented
By your harrowing cries
Every mother’s lap aches
To cradle your tired spirit
The gravity of your despair
Parallels the intensity of our rage
In our memory
We burned the image of you
In a cramped wooden box
Curled like a fetus
Helpless from capacious terror

Your suffering is the fillip
That moves apathy to hide in shame
The tonic that washes down lethargy
In a people arrested by hunger

Behold us link our spirits
See our palm curl into a cup
To capture every gobbet
Of your tears
The salt of the earth
We will hold a feast
And drink your struggle
Tomorrow, we rise with our spears
We will bring you
Home
To every mother waiting for you

Should you be sapped of life
We will lie with you
In your grave
Our grave
From which will rise our ghost
To settle the score
To haunt evil
Till it tires.

SQUATTER

SQUATTER

(for M.C.)

With a tentative hug, they said goodbye

He sauntered, backpack embracing him

She ran, ineffable sorrow enveloping her

No rearward squint; anguish must not tarry

The moon turned crescent, full, half, quarter

Once, twice, a million times. She lost count

In another world, another life claimed her

Spring disembarked from the snow. But her

Ring is still cold like ice in the mantelpiece

Obdurate in its defiance of the wrathful fire

In a big space in her heart, he abides…still

Like a squatter on someone else’s property

In her mind she sees again and yet again

His easy form in front of an old computer

Smoking stick after stick of Sampoerna

Punching the keyboard, he bedecks her

With warm silky descriptions of his love

As if carried by a soft whisper in the dark

Did they not say goodbye then? But what

Is goodbye? Is it not the pain on hindsight

That never goes? Oh, goodbye is a word

That deceives even the tongue that says it

Like a man suffering from a ghastly curse

How it deeply regrets the day of its birth.

COUNTDOWN: TEN DAYS

(Mike’s Final Appeal)

So you have made your choice.

I beg leave:
Let me journey with our children
Back to Baguio
Where the past still hovers nigh
Where Love smelled fresh
As pine scent after the first rains
Where Faith was unsullied
As a newborn’s innocence
Back to where the biting cold
Was conquered by your feather-light touch
Where every space of emptiness
Was crammed by your presence
Where the wonted wine glass
We shared on a thousand nights
Was not a corpus of myriad shards

Let me and the children
Dunk into the familiar
Before it morphed into fiction
In our old hotel room, we will relive the laughter
Which once echoed repeatedly in our life
May it burn in their memory
Like footprints purposely abandoned
On wet cement.

There, in that honeymooners’ arcadia
I will break free, at least momentarily
From this searing melancholy
I will probably shed some tears
But –thank Providence- they will be disguised
As spatters of Baguio’s incessant rain

Then you can take my children to your new life
One without me
In the dining table
In the living room
In the bedroom
In your heart
Because someone else will be

But at least, tomorrow
I can put my feet up, assured
They will always hark back to the Baguio days
When there was love

And, in it, there was I.

HOMONYMS FOR SILENCE-INDUCED MUTUAL PAIN

"She doesn't know either. She doesn't know the reason why. All I know was Pops is in the dark, taken by surprise."-Martin Nievera speaking for his ex-wife Pops Fernandez on the reason for the break-up of her romance with Jomari Yllana.

(Inspired by the Break-up of Pops and Jomari)

Patent is your wonder: You ask, how did I bear
The pain your leaving caused, colossal as a bear
It matters that I save armaments in my bank
From which I pull vigor; on it I always bank
To survive during times when I am short of air

I’m strong! So now I feel I ‘m quite prepared to air
Questions we must dissect, issues we need to close
So despite our parting, we can stay friends, be close
Tell me the truth: was your noiseless departure due
To harm I may have caused you, far from fairly due?

My nights - restive, perturbed, with guilt I need to fare
Every debt must be paid: A ride demands a fare
State clearly my arrears! You do not have to grill
Me with your dogged silence. Send me behind the grill!
I would much rather bear than stand under a hail

Of reticent sharp glare. Speak! Say, “Pardoned. All hail
To farewell sans remorse.” On your mercy, I’ll lean
We’ll start again as friends; I pray- my hope not lean
We shall embrace candor , discard farce thick as hide
The new slate - clean, shipshape; no shame, no pain to hide.

THE END OF THE AFFAIR

(In Sympathy to Mark Sanford)

Ah, but there is no certain providence
For this hopelessly impossible love
None, but a catastrophic conclusion
It does not hurt any less but much more
To keep waiting for an engaged ship
Fated never ever to dock at your quay

Quietly, we sit, habitués of this café,
Insulated from an interfering crowd
By the unsuspecting assembly itself
Bold, I come to declare all I need to
No more than necessary to reason
See me naked, bereft of my heart

I beg: Spare me this indignant silence
Weighing heavier than a spoken curse
Deeply inflaming this bedeviling regret
How can you not know: Goodbye is not
What I want to do, but what we need to?
For the last time, can’t we feign eagerness

To strike a tête-à-tête about the samba
Or your Che Guevara or Obama’s smoke
Or darkness dispelling the sun’s light
Before we quickly spew our farewell?
Or do we skip awkward preliminaries
Lest this thin resolve for parting dissolves?

And then we depart from this old café
Each of us clutching a fragmented soul
Scampering to two different continents
Then in the inner sanctum of our hearts
Let us release the tears as if in a funeral
Parting, like freedom, is its own redemption

And so without much ado, let us conclude
Our journey to each other, here, halfway
With words that bear no hint of semblance
To our whispers under the Argentinian moon
Speak! Or is your pained taciturnity your way
Of telling me, “What else is there to say?”
/ chytdaytec 28june09

Governor Sanford of South Carolina, USA wipes his tears as he publicly acknowledges his affair with an Argentinian woman. Why can't I bring myself to judge him?