Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










How Dare Your Heart Decide

            For Bimboy Peñaranda who left too soon

Paano na yan Bimboy? Natututo pa ako sa iyo kung paano tumula.
What now Bimboy? I was still learning from you how to write poetry.

 
How dare your heart decide
it was time to go.
You had so much to write
and so, so much for me to know—

How it is the quiet, for example,
that cups the frog-blessed Basho’s pond
And the pause between breaths
that causes slowly spoken words to glow

How better than clocks, streams and rivers
measure our lives’ flow
And how the dewdrop world implies
The starry universe in tow.

You had still to explain the architecture
of a rainforest church
Or how it is the whole night’s silence that fills
A rooster’s heart to crow.

You had so much to write
and so, so much for me to know—
And now there is just this heavy noiselessness
to bear, after you, a poet of such sweet silences, go.