Jose Victor Peñaranda, one of the Philippines’ premier poets, a recipient of the Gawad Balagtas from UMPIL or Writers' Union of the Philippines for his body of works, and declared Poet of the Year by Philippines Graphic magazine in its 2015 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards, recently passed away at age 64. Galatea Resurrects is honored to feature a selection of his recent poems below, followed by more information about him.
Galatea Resurrects thank Alfred A. Yuson for helping us feature some of Jose Victor Peñaranda’s
poems:
LIKE A POEM
Feeling
like a poem today
Not
as strange as people say
A
cup of coffee and mist of a song
Don’t
really mind if something will go wrong
There’s
no claim of stepping out of a dream
Mornings
don’t really mean what they seem.
Last
night I was struck by a moonbeam.
Feeling
like a poem today
Not
as purple as people say
Here’s
a chance to create this rainbow of unrest
This
rain of remembering to put barricades to test
Recall
the truth where roses soak the heat
When
a cat misses a sparrow by a heartbeat.
Last
night I met Mount Apo in an empty street.
Feeling
like a poem today
Not
as unexpected as people say
Who
cares about turning into vapor
When
clouds can absorb you as a favor
So
journey far and never feel alone
Manage
to get lost in someone else’s zone.
Last
night we found each other at home.
September
21, 2017
SHARED SPACE
I
lean on the honesty of a window
To
recognize the pliant bamboo,
To
appreciate the useful broom
Made
of mid-ribs from palm leaves.
My
mind relates easily with the ordinary,
Expands
itself into a garden where a child
Can
play and exchange pencil for a rose,
Where
I can claim a portion of the day
To
rest habits in parenthesis.
It
seems the right thing for me to do:
Invite
you to share this familiar space
So
we can probe the migrant nature of birds
And
dwell in the pleasure of our laughter
I
shall burst like a pod of seeds
At
your bright touch or consign myself
To
be a poem hanging on a clothesline
Waiting
for you to pass by and read me
Slowly,
release me from words delicately...
Find
home wherever we may journey.
TIMELESS
We are two
faces of an old silver coin
Saved from the
legend of sunken galleons;
We seem
different but peculiarly the same.
Your presence
made me timeless:
I became an
island to your surrounding sea,
Wilderness to
your expanding universe.
Our existence
depended on each other
Like the
shifting realms of dark and light
Resting on one
another in equinox.
Some people
said we should be similar
Like one
raindrop following another,
But we knew
better than the weather.
Having met
each other by skin of touch,
Combustible as
kindling, our bodies turned
Incandescent,
weightless as palm wine --
My memory
giddy with priceless history.
As we grew
older we turned into lovers
Restless for
each other’s happiness.
January 1, 2016
START THE DAY
Start
the day with the crow outside the window,
With
the morning light spilling from mountain rim
Start
with the frost on the grass,
With
the mist stranded in the valley
Start
with the cold and the ache between the loins,
With
pages of an open book left unread
Start
with sitting still, a prayer, a blessing
Then
begin imagining how the day unfolds,
How
work tends to occupy so much space
Start
again by acknowledging sources of attention:
Patience
from gardening, imagination from cooking
Passion
from poetry, kindness from those
We
learn to love without fail
Proceed
by preparing a simple meal
Fate
As I crossed
a path in the garden
my mind turned
lush and curious,
wondered if it
was my fate
to save
all sorts of seeds
discarded
from our kitchen,
to care
for fallen stars
abandoned
before dawn.
As I was about
to open
the door to the
library,
I felt a sensation
on my forearm,
a bristle on my skin,
something
slight and green:
An innocent clinging,
a mantis praying.
July 5, 2017
PURE
AS PRESENT
The problem
with you, someone told him,
is you traded
a sense of security for history;
You perform
poetry as duty to family
Unwilling to
yield the mystical for the practical.
What's odd
about you, others told him,
is you feel at
home in strange places;
You find
community wherever you journey,
The rhyme in
time to commune with jasmine.
He offers no
opinion, even when people talk
About the
festivals of corrupted nobility,
About a
cheering majority that couldn't
Recall lessons
from parables or lost marbles.
He prefers to
meet the wilderness,
Be among
friends who are pure and present,
Who return to
the site of massacre
Without
bitterness or feeling helpless.
They spend
time to teach children who walk
For miles to
school hoping to lose their shyness,
Believing
education will be an adventure
Even if there
are no subjects on happiness.
He elects
those who reclaim forgotten fields,
Working among
farmers mired in mud and debt
So they could
learn together from the rain,
Recover for
their children the talisman of pride.
In rich and
fragrant sources of their sadness,
In the chanted
rainbow of tribal memory,
In the lost
confessionals of rainforests,
In the hearts
of those who are river to the sea.
He knows no
tension when an owl loses a feather,
No strain on
rattan when woven with kind intention,
No stress in
being among the blessed restless
Those who take
a quiet stand and understand.
Sept. 16, 2016
LIKENESS
Memory, a
scent
of cinnamon
and flavor of tarragon,
Lingers where
gravity
is weakest and
my presence leaps.
I, who have
been made
in the
likeness of song, embrace
The sadness of
sand and stone.
Only the
beating
of small wings
in the forest
can create a
lullaby for stars.
Only moss will
dare to care
for driftwood
at nightfall.
How
surprising, quite unsettling
when someone
invites me
to watch the
rice fields in moonlight
to free
ourselves of paradise.
6 June 2017, Las Piñas
UNPREDICTABLE
I
am morning light
when
mushrooms on bamboo fences
blow
spores in the air,
divining
for opposites in quiet agreement.
I
am untouchable, unpredictable,
soluble
in magic spells, rhythm of rivers.
When
someone looks at me
with
eyes of opal delight
I
bend molave into a rainbow
to
tell a story.
14
August 2017
MORNING WALK
Morning
approaches, bare and golden,
Whispering,
seductive as fallen light
On
moss, touching without forgetting...
I'm
woven into silence in this wilderness
Where
birdsong is released from the leaf
By
a vow of the ephemeral...
Slowly,
the universe emerges from sleep
Knowing
the moment when all is God...
Somewhere,
a tree clings gently to the breeze
*****
Jose Victor Peñaranda authored two collections of poems, Voyage in Dry Season and Pilgrim in Transit (both published by Anvil Publishing), and a collection of poems and prose on his experience in Bhutan, Lucid Lighting (UST Publishing). He has also written poems in Waray. “Bimboy” worked and travelled extensively as a researcher and capacity-builder in community development projects in the Philippines, Bhutan, Macedonia, and elsewhere.
He was named the 2015 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards Poet of the Year by Philippines Graphic magazine. He has also been honored with a Gawad Balagtas by the Unyon ng Manunulat ng Pilipinas (Writers Union of the Philippines) for his work as poet and writer.
A committed advocate for the environment, Peñaranda also worked as a journalist, holding the post of managing and opinion editor of the now defunct The Evening Paper in the late 1990s. He has been engaged in development work with international organizations, leading him to stay for several years in Macedonia thence Bhutan. He has done similar work locally, in Samar and Leyte and various areas in Mindanao.
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