This Publisher's Column shall feature developments related to Filipino literature. Each monthly update also shall include a featured poet and poem. For comments and suggestions, please e-mail Meritage Press Associate Editor Jade Afable at Jade@meritagepress.com


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October's featured poet and poem is Bino A. Realuyo and his poem "Day of Valor." Bino A. Realuyo's poetry has appeared in several literary journals and anthologies including The Kenyon Review, Manoa, The Literary Review and The Nation. He is the recipient of a Van Lier Fellowship in Poetry and the 1998 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from Poetry Society in America. His yet to be published collection is titled THE GODS WE WORSHIP LIVE NEXT DOOR. He lives in Manhattan. More information is available at his Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/realuyo/.

2002 is the 60th anniversary of The Death March in Bataan and the Camp O'Donnell Concentration Camp. Philippine and American history have always remembered this tragic time in history as "The Fall of Bataan," highlighting the tragic downfall of the World War II defenders over their heroism. In 1999, the Philippines adopted a new name, "The Day of Valor." Bino's father, Augusto Roa Realuyo, was a soldier from this period of history. A 1st Lieutenant in the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), he was recruited out of the University of the Philippines, where he was a twenty-year old Engineering student. Since the Death March, he has been in and out of veteran hospitals in the Philippines and the U.S.

Meritage Press is pleased to present the poem Bino wrote for his father, published here for the first time:

DAY OF VALOR
(formerly Fall of Bataan)

". . . of the surviving 60,000 veterans, now in their 80s, an average of five die every day. In a few more years, we shall run out of living heroes we pretend to pay tribute to every 9th of April."*

for Augusto Roa Realuyo, Death March and Camp O'Donnell Concentration Camp survivor, born January 19, 1921, imprisoned April 12, 1942.

i.

No marches in the street, no candles on tombs, no tombs.

Wood, old curtains and wind: widows in their wakes, reciting prayers for closures. A proper funeral at least, one with flags, songs, winds of floating leaves.

The red of the flag are cries that no one hears.

Not in a country too busy turning it to blue, navy blue, the color when it turns its head away, toward a memorial for simple things, simple tombs.

Simple songs, the song of the Japanese while they watched them march, thinning, because their skin couldn't handle the weight of their bones, the desire of their mouths for the bayonets to end all memories of memories.

Bodies after bodies, with no space between; days after nights, with no names, rooting soil, without water, feeding it.

Puddles becoming drinking water. Ground, resting soil. The choice is between forcing knees to walk or kneeling to embrace a bayonet.

Clouds of dust, voice of death, unwashed eyes: the choice was clear in my father's head.

And every day, he remembers the choice he made.

At twenty-one, how does one imagine prisons? At eighty, how does one find the way out?

Now, he limps. No crutches, he says.

He is half-prepared for his tomb, half-away from his country, half-fighting for his breath.

Only memory is whole, the walls, the march, The Death March.

ii.

Do you remember the march of the fallen, my country? Were you on the ground crawling too?

1942: oh, so far away.

Since. Year after year of festivities of color, songs like no other, uniforms, firm and trimmed.

The other day, my mother said he fell again. She watches my father now, for he walks as if the ground is bringing him in more and more each day.

Gravity shows on his face. He sleeps all day. He wakes to eat. Water, living off pills.

The last time he fell, he died for two minutes. Two minutes he left us, then he came back, to smile, to tell us how warm his bed was.

Country, we carry these hospital beds all our lives, is there one on your back?

He doesn't know there is no more Fall of Bataan, that the name has been changed. Day of Valor they call it back home.

Day of Valor. The silence it brings. He carries it inside, the weight of sixty years.

Every foot of the ground is an effort for his age. In this country, at every moment, he asks his own for forgiveness.

Forgiveness for what?

The Fall of Bataan. So etched in memory, rusty, a date on a rusty sword. How they disappointed you, my country. The falling you never quite forgot. So short, the Filipino memory, so thin, so quickly you chose to forget the names of those who got up and walked.

So ashamed of the fallen, my country?

There were those who tried to get away, flying with fear. They only wanted roof, water, food, simple things, simple wings.

But got the bayonet, simple twists of fists.

You don't remember much of it, my country. No one speaks of it as much.

My father sits at the window. I am not sure what is on his mind. I am a little boy, trying to understand the stares so misplaced in this time of my life. He looks somewhere as if there, in that place, he finds an angel of peace. I'm this child who watched him disappear, who watched his shadow fly from corners to corners, hours becoming years. The boy becoming a man. But never once a son.

The red on their flag are days of the sun that no one remembers.

Clear memory: my father used to kill rats, he ran after them, one by one, he killed them, watched them wretch. He talked to them, cursed at them, at their deaths.

He said, "they used to eat our food."

Concentration Camp food: water in a soiled can, sardine can, slipped through a low-hole blocked by arms, crisscrossing on the floor, a camaraderie of death.

Perhaps in another life, they held each other too, still finding a way out of the camp. How did anyone, dead or not, find his way out of this camp?

Who found you my father, who found you?

My father said a priest found him, kept him in a church.

My grandfather claimed he brought him back. My grandmother claimed she nursed him back.

My father said they abandoned him.

I think you did the same, my country.

No marches in the street, no candles on tombs, no tombs. Wood, old curtains and wind: widows in their wakes, reciting prayers for closures. A proper funeral at least, one with flags, songs, winds of floating leaves. The red of the flag are cries that no one hears. Not in a country too busy turning it to blue, navy blue, the color when it turns its head away, toward a memorial for simple things, simple tombs.

On tombs, you simply write names of the dead, while the living are waiting for you to say theirs?

Write the names on your palms, the few left, write the names on your minds, the many who survived, names of those for whom believing is an everyday.

Believing that you will remember their names, my country, not the day they fell.

Never the day they fell. Never the Fall.

Yet, I know one day he will fall again.

When I was born, my father was almost fifty. Now, at eighty, he casts a long shadow. The days left are making it longer, wider. He sees the light perhaps, the door, the way out of the camp. Maybe his father was there, maybe the priest. But there are no shadows at the door.

My country, you could have been at that door.

He walks slowly like memory, slowly, afraid to fall.

Slowly, afraid to die.

I am a child, learning history through visions. Learning to love through absence. Around me are hospital beds. There are men without legs. There are sounds of regular spitting. There is anger, voiceless but loud. There are empty white walls. There is a father who is never there. There is a country that has fallen on her own soil.

Come, my country, take my hand.

(*From Day of Valor, by Kimi Tuvera, Urban Shoes, April 15, 1999)

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"I WILL ALWAYS MOURN"

On September 11, 2001, hijacked jet planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands in the worst terrorist attack yet on the United States. In the aftermath, poet Cristina Querrer e-mailed out a letter to "Humanity," which we reprint below. Cristina has seen her poems published in such publications as the anthology BABAYLAN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FILIPINA AND FILIPINA AMERICAN WRITERS, as well as the magazines The Fairfield Review, Poetryism, Likhaan Online (The University of the Philippines Online Literary Magazine) and Stirring. Born in 1967 in Dagupan City, she grew up on Clark Air Force Base for most of her childhood and transplanted to Connecticut since 1985. She joined the U.S. Army at age 27, and is "currently a computer geek in the private sector by day...a mother always, a writer when she can, and a weekend warrior, one weekend a month." Cristina says, "I write about anything that affects me directly--the people, places and things that have so moved me...The meat of my writing is love, obsession and the fear of loss." Here is her open letter:

Dear Humanity,

Most of you might not know me. I'm usually the quiet one standing in the corner. Today I would like to say something like everyone else on the state of affairs.

I am a mother of two, a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in the Philippines. I am a Filipina American woman who is currently a member of the U.S. Army, who will probably be called in to defend/support our country, United States. Lastly, I am poet who is ruled by emotion. To say the least, my conscience is torn and pulled in many directions. I'd like to share two poems ["This Is What I Know" and "Dry Season"] with you today to simply express my discernment.

As a soldier's duty I will defend and sacrifice myself to protect you; country, your children and mine...but I still believe foremost what pragmatists proclaim as intangible: hope, the power of prayer and love.

May our need for righteousness not muddle our view for the inevitable truth which may never be realized now.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW

That the trees weep
when we haste to waste
and the world tilts
to unclog its ears
from talks of war.
That pressure points
never break the skin
unlike the impact of
a memory.

That you so much
have said that
you have done
your best, and I am
still lying open,
like an unrelished book.

That loathing is as evident
as fine print and atrocities---
continuances of indignation
and when the faint light dies
we become refugees of dark thoughts
and prisoners of a wretched moment.

That I will always mourn
Morocco or the Himalayas
where I seem to fly
awake in my dreams
and that I shall continue walking
toward the sea
with everything of you

before planes crashed
before buildings burned
before the world rebelled
all the way to the silence
of your mother's womb

***

DRY SEASON

O, butterfly! If you only knew the beauty
Of your exposed reply that castigated the cage---
But sudden death awaited as you pried apart your shell.
How awful, too, for the lion's catch twitching
In its mouth, born it seems, exactly for that purpose.

Birds ascending for migration
Remain in the ear by their splintered sound,
And sharp air left a gash in the day
Which went on scarring the nights.

Pity the silent order of things here in the tangle
Where bellies and hearts yearn for reach;
Tongues singed and throats thirsting
For the dankness of downfall.

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"POEMS FORM/FROM THE SIX DIRECTIONS"
A multidisciplinary project by Eileen Tabios

ATTENTION ALL POETS: You are cordially invited to Eileen Tabios' marriage to Poetry. RSVP by Oct. 31, 2001 by sending a poem to PinoyPoetics@aol.com:

Culminating a four-year poetic alchemic process, Eileen Tabios will exhibit sculptures, drawings, installations and a performance wedding ceremony during her May/June 2002 exhibition at Pusod Center, a program of the Babilonia Wilner Foundation (BWF), in Berkeley, CA. The exhibit features the results of her attempts to cast poems as physical bodies and/or multidimensional spaces. Her series is titled after the Native American concept of six directions: north, south, east, west, up and down.

Reflecting Six Directions' concept of making the Poet's persona seamless with the world, the exhibition will include Ms. Tabios's collaborations with quilt-maker Alice Brody, musician Joey Ayala and poets Paolo Javier and Barbara Reyes. To further reflect her project's desire to draw in the world into the space of her poems, the exhibit will feature two guest artists: New Yorker/New Zealander artist Max Gimblett, whose use of alchemical materials and archetypal references empathizes with Ms. Tabios's poetic approach; and V.C. Igarta, the foremost artist from the Filipino "Manong" generation who emigrated to the U.S. in the early 20th century.

A key work in this series will be "Poem Tree," featuring Ms. Tabios's original wedding dress. "Poem Tree" evokes the Filipino wedding tradition of guests pinning money on the bride and groom's clothes during the wedding celebration to offer financial aid for the new couple's life together. "Poem Tree" will be pinned with print-outs of poems to symbolize Ms. Tabios' wedding to Poetry. To integrate the (external) world into the (internal) world of Ms. Tabios' poetry, all the poems pinned to the dress are written and will be sent by other poets from around the world.

Poets are invited to share in Ms. Tabios' installation of "Poem Tree" by e-mailing her poems (no longer than one page) to <PinoyPoetics@aol.com>. The poems will be printed out and its hard copies will be among those pinned onto "Poem Tree." No poems will be rejected as inclusion is integral to the concept of Six Directions. Poets should include names and geographic residence in addition to e-mail addresses. Deadline for sending poems: Oct. 31, 2001.

During the exhibition's opening, a special appearance will be made by the wedding dress of BWF founder Malou Babilionia. Poets wearing Ms. Babilonia's and Ms. Tabios' wedding dresses will dance with members of the crowd. Attendees will be invited to pin poems onto the dresses. During this "happening," the crowd also will be invited to pin real money onto the gowns. All monies raised during the event will be donated to BWF's efforts to help reduce environmental pollution and facilitate a better understanding of economic, cultural and ecological conditions around the world. Ms. Tabios considers the fundraising attempt appropriate for indicating how Poetry can make a difference -- that Poetry can feed the world.

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Aunt Lute Press is delighted to invite you to:

FILIPINA LITERATURE AND ARTS IN THE DIASPORA

When: October 17, 2001, 7 p.m.
Where: 16 W. 32nd St., 10th Floor (AAWW space), New York City 10001
Sponsors: Arkipelago and Aunt Lute Press
Associate Sponsor: FORWARD

To officially launch Merlinda Bobis' short story collection THE KISSING, Eileen Tabios, Lara Stapleton, Gina Apostol, Angel Shaw and Perla Daly join Merlinda Bobis in discussing their art. Lara and Gina are fictionists, Angel is a filmmaker, Perla is a conceptual artist whose work includes co-founding BagongPinay.com and, for this event, Eileen will pretend to be a sculptor.

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Congratulations to Luis Cabalquinto whose long-awaited collection of selected poems from 1969-2001, BRIDGEABLE SHORES, has just been released through Kaya Press (distributed by D.A.P. and available through Amazon.com). The author of three poetry collections published in the Philippines, he has been widely anthologized in the United States. The recipient of numerous awards including a poetry prize from the Academy of American Poets and the New School's Dylan Thomas Poetry Award, Luis's first U.S. collection includes poems whose healing power might help counter part of the shock of the September 11, 2001 tragedy --- poems like:

SOME NIGHT

Some night when you're out there in an open field,
looking intently at the black velvet sky thickly
beaded with stars, you might also feel what I've felt

on such a night. You might feel the heavy weight
of your thoughts drop and vanish into the grass
and all that really mattered would be the full volume

of your body displacing the same volume of air;
then taking some of it back into an open mouth
With each long slow intake, holding breath a minute

then letting go, sensing the flushing power of the act.
A cleanliness of being would pulse out into the universe.
Unseen, someone would be singing from afar---

a young woman's voice, riding thin and fragile
on the southeast gust that would brush past your ear like fur;
and some deep part of you would be yearning for her

To come and share this pain, the stinging ache of your joy.