poetry

Presidential Address
by Francis Macansantos

I am wind, now, and the fetid air
Dreaming among the unwashed crockery,
And this, my country seat, is all there is
Untouched by claim and counter-claim,
Or by the fingers that fidget,
Aching to number my bones.
I hover about these grounds and, at a whim,
Gust the door open, rush in,
Bang the windows shut and turn on the shower.
This way I keep my wits about me,
Trusting that old terror will, as always,
Keep the timid away from passionate places.
And though I cannot keep back the jungle’s return,
I rather like the way a sinewy tropical vine
Coils around a tree I had planted,
Strangling, but keeping it erect, perhaps for always.
Ha! I, too, as leisure allows, can imitate
All recorders and prophets, grown sturdy on dead time
(Their staff of immortality) till staff or heaven totter.
Oh, yes, with nothing better to do, I dream and talk,
But find in disembodiment one advantage:
I do not need to judge on particulars
Because whatever I say turns mythical,
Rolling echoes fore and aft in time.
And what history does not repeat its babble
With childish gusto? So here I go again
--Twirling saprophyte—here go my vagrant
Circumlocutions: All history is one,
All variations of me, or such as me:
I am its incantation. In life I was
A lush and tropic mass of words
That cast a spell over my islands,
Cast a net all over them because I loved them
And love them still. Because to grasp, to comprehend,
Is to embrace; all understanding is control.
And though in life I seemed espoused
To the futile notion of progress,
At heart I never aspired to heights
Greater than I can fly now.
Here, then, this earth, this native soil,
Is all there is to love infinitely.
Such Earth… such womanhood!
You’d finger her till she is bone and ashes.
You’d haunt her still, when you are bone and ashes.
There is no other Time than that which fruits from Earth
Great lovers to ravish her perpetually.
Consider that Zeus slashed off Kronos’ vitals.
No one else could have done it better—
No one else but the hero and murderer.
For such is history: the sons must bury their fathers
To keep alive the heritage of passion.
Yet there are many among us who say they would
                         be Zeus
to their own Kronos,
to pay the full price of equality.
I say, could anyone be so deceived?
Loving is no right; it is a privilege.
Only the great lovers, insatiable, shall reap
The fairest fruit of this Earth’s bounty.
So, here I remain—ghost which no appeal, meta-
                         physical,
Can raise much higher
Than my desire.

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