Babel
Itinatatag ng paningin ang tayog.
Tagos sa ulap ang tinitingalang
di matanaw sa abot ng tanaw.
Sa ligid ng pagtitipon, ang guho.
Nasaan ang katuparan?
Bago ang lahat, ang abala ng ingay.
(pahayag)
Bigla, sandaling antala.
(hulog ng tahimik)
Wika nga, anghel na dumadaan.
(buhol sa dila ng paliwanag)
Pagkaraan, hukbo ng mga anghel.
Pagkaraan, ang pakiramdam
na may magaganap.
(badya)
Papalapit sa isang rurok.
Ang sandali bago muling bumagsak
ang mabigat na kamay ng Diyos.
Muli, ang naudlot sa dulo ng dila
ni Adan habang iniaabot ang prutas.
(namnam na bawal)
Ang iisang salita.
Narito.
Nananatili itong walang pangalan.
Morpo
Mula sa kaliwa, sa takda ng hanggan,
itinutulak ang katahimikan.
Mabigat na pintong naghahayag
sa pahayag.
Tiyak ang usad sa kitid ng laya.
Tungo sa gilid ng bangin, sa antala
ng pagharap sa paglalahuan.
Bagamat muling bumabangon.
Hanggang ganap na ipinid ang pinto
ng pagkakataon.
May hiwaga ang guhit na ito.
May kamay na namagitan sa kawalan
at pagkakaroon.
Walang nakababalik.
Tila bisagra, ikutan ito ng pagbubukas.
Angklang renda sa bigat ng hakbang.
(tandaan, walang nakababalik)
Busal ang busilak na pahina.
May mga labing banaag sa patlang.
Nag-aanyo.
Na may ibig sabihin?
Mula sa kaliwa. Muling bumabangon.
Bigat ng hakbang. Tandaan.
Sa takdang hanggan.
Habang sa labas, ang nanunuot
na mundo ng ingay.
Sa labas ng mundo, ang katahimikan.
Na tinatawag ding kalawakan.
Sa linyang ito umiinog ang daigdig.
Imago
Alam ng mga kulisap.
Kanila ang di mabilang na patunay.
Kung kaya, totoo.
Silang tumatabing sa katanghalian
ng paliwanag.
Laksang anino ng mga pakpak.
Ito ang kahinugan.
Sa hangin, ang makapit na lagkit.
Ang huni.
Isabog ang sandakot.
Masdan ang mumunting mga kamay
mula sa dilim.
(sabik)
Ang paglaho bago sumayad.
(pugad ng grabedad)
Ang isang uri ng gutom.
Sa tigang na lupa, mga katawang
inaakyat ang isa't isa.
Nagtutuklapang kaliskis sa lingkis.
Pagkaraan, sigabo ng pagtatalik.
(hugong)
Buntis na along uhaw sa pag-ahon.
(maiikli ang buhay, bumubulong)
Ang dami, dumadami, ang dami-dami.
Walang anyong maghihilom.
Walang labíng nilalabí.
Dilang Anghel
Ibinubuka nila ang mga pakpak.
Muling nalalaglag ang kanilang anino
Bagamat hindi sumasayad sa lupa.
Matagal na silang nakatanaw.
Hindi kailanman kumurap.
Hindi kailanman tumalikod.
Hindi nila kailanman itinakip
Sa mukha ang kanilang mga kamay
Na masunuring humahaplos ng trumpeta.
Kung minsan, dinadalaw sila ng alala
Ng tinig. Nais nilang ibuka ang bibig.
Ngunit wala silang masabi.
Ano ang dila kundi isang piraso
Ng laman na hindi kayang malunok.
Sa Pagtawid
Nakatitig ang mga madre sa ilog.
May pangamba sa kanilang mga mata.
Ito ang oras ng paglaki ng tubig.
Humakbang ang isa upang damhin ang lamig.
Sumunod ang iba upang tumawid.
Isang madilim na alon ang kanilang paglusong.
Sa kanilang mga binti, waring sinusukat nila
Ang unti-unting paglalim ng agos
Habang naghahanap ng tatag ang bawat yapak.
Hanggang mabasa ang kanilang damit.
Huminto sila at inilibot ang paningin.
Nagtagpo ang kanilang mga tingin.
Bahagyang inangat nila ang kanilang laylayan.
Napapikit habang tinatawid ang tuhod.
Maingay ang pagragasa ng ilog.
Gumapang paakyat ng katawan ang lamig.
Nadarama nila ang pagbigat ng suot
Na bumabakat sa nakatagong hubog.
Sa kalagitnaan ng kanilang pagtawid,
Narinig nila ang mahinang tawag ng orasyon.
Nanginginig silang umawit ng papuri.
Eba
Sa lilim ng yungib, dinadalaw siya
Ng pangamba. Siya na nakaaalala
Kung paano pukawin sa mahimbing
Na katawan ng iba.
Huhugutin mula sa sarili ang nawala
Bilang tunay na parusa sa pagkakasala.
Nakabalot sa balat ng ilahas na hayop
Ang kaniyang panganay, humihiram ng init.
Sumasagi sa kaniyang isip ang pinakamalagim
Na maaaring sapitin ng kaniyang anak.
Ganito unang nadama ang pag-ibig.
Anim na Tula
Allan Popa
'Babel,' 'Morpo' and 'Imago' (from Morpo, 2001) were translated by Jose Perez Beduya in collaboration with the author. 'Tongues of Angels' (from Kami sa Lahat ng Masama, 2003) was translated by Jose Edmundo Ocampo Reyes. 'Crossing' and 'Eve' (also from Kami sa Lahat ng Masama, 2003) were translated by Marc Gaba.
In working with Allan Popa on translations from his second book, Morpo (which signals both "shape" or "form" as well as the linguistic "morpheme"), I came to realize that translation is a transcoding of not merely meanings but more importantly processes—a pantographic performance of the author's manipulation of words as concrete materials, with an awareness of the properties of the original language.
Filipino, unlike English, generates meanings through echoing: In most cases, changes in verb tenses, degree of qualification, and word forms are effected through reduplication, where part or all of the root word is repeated. Popa foregrounds this peculiarity in lines such as this, from "Imago":
Ang dami, dumadami, ang dami-dami.
Here the root word dami, which means "number" or "the many", becomes the present tense verb "multiplies" through the addition of the bound morpheme "um" and then transforms into the "too many" or the "overmuch" through the doubling of the root word. Needless to say, preserving the morphemic/phonemic repetition—a crucial element—was a challenging negotiation, with all alternatives freighted with losses. In the end, to create an analogue for the original, we settled for:
Amounting-to, mounting, surmounting.
This sequence encapsulates the book's intertwined animating drives: the desire to mean and the desire to be—the yearned-for unity of logos and ontos, Word and Flesh, in a world of emergings, crestings, and dissolvings. Popa enacts these twin movements through repetition and permutation, the innate mechanisms of Filipino and the very engines of desire.
In Morpo, Popa brings the stutter inside words into relation with the voluminous silence of finitude. It is a book most of all about poetic making and unmaking, at language's atomic level. The reduplications inherent in the original language register as echoes bouncing off of limits, which are both outside and inside itself. For example, in "Alingaw" (not included in this selection), Popa elides the last syllable of the irreducible word alingawngaw, meaning "echo," to make audible through negation the echoes that travel backwards from silence to speech, from fragment to whole.
Through the use of homonyms, Popa also calls attention to the chasms between and underneath words, signaling the separation of meaning and being. Consider this brief yet aporetic ultimate line from "Imago":
Walang labing nilalabi.
Walang translates simply to the negative adjective "no," but the last two words carry different meanings. The root word labi here could mean "mouth" or "lips" as well "remains," while nilalabi could mean either "to mouth" or "to leave remains of." These variants and the chiasmic sonics of the original present us with at least four translation alternatives: "No mouth to speak from," "no speech remaining," "no remains to speak," or "no remains remaining." Any choice among these possibilities is inadequate.
Ultimately, in translating Popa's poems and working in the space between languages, I am made aware of the act of choosing as an acknowledgement and a refusal of the finitude that Morpo traces and erases.
-- Jose Perez Beduya
Filipino, unlike English, generates meanings through echoing: In most cases, changes in verb tenses, degree of qualification, and word forms are effected through reduplication, where part or all of the root word is repeated. Popa foregrounds this peculiarity in lines such as this, from "Imago":
Ang dami, dumadami, ang dami-dami.
Here the root word dami, which means "number" or "the many", becomes the present tense verb "multiplies" through the addition of the bound morpheme "um" and then transforms into the "too many" or the "overmuch" through the doubling of the root word. Needless to say, preserving the morphemic/phonemic repetition—a crucial element—was a challenging negotiation, with all alternatives freighted with losses. In the end, to create an analogue for the original, we settled for:
Amounting-to, mounting, surmounting.
This sequence encapsulates the book's intertwined animating drives: the desire to mean and the desire to be—the yearned-for unity of logos and ontos, Word and Flesh, in a world of emergings, crestings, and dissolvings. Popa enacts these twin movements through repetition and permutation, the innate mechanisms of Filipino and the very engines of desire.
In Morpo, Popa brings the stutter inside words into relation with the voluminous silence of finitude. It is a book most of all about poetic making and unmaking, at language's atomic level. The reduplications inherent in the original language register as echoes bouncing off of limits, which are both outside and inside itself. For example, in "Alingaw" (not included in this selection), Popa elides the last syllable of the irreducible word alingawngaw, meaning "echo," to make audible through negation the echoes that travel backwards from silence to speech, from fragment to whole.
Through the use of homonyms, Popa also calls attention to the chasms between and underneath words, signaling the separation of meaning and being. Consider this brief yet aporetic ultimate line from "Imago":
Walang labing nilalabi.
Walang translates simply to the negative adjective "no," but the last two words carry different meanings. The root word labi here could mean "mouth" or "lips" as well "remains," while nilalabi could mean either "to mouth" or "to leave remains of." These variants and the chiasmic sonics of the original present us with at least four translation alternatives: "No mouth to speak from," "no speech remaining," "no remains to speak," or "no remains remaining." Any choice among these possibilities is inadequate.
Ultimately, in translating Popa's poems and working in the space between languages, I am made aware of the act of choosing as an acknowledgement and a refusal of the finitude that Morpo traces and erases.
-- Jose Perez Beduya
Allan Popa is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Drone (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2013) and Laan (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2013). He has received the Philippines Free Press Literary Award and the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award. He teaches at the Filipino Department of Ateneo de Manila University and is currently the director of Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices (AILAP).
Jose Perez Beduya earned his BFA in Painting from the University of the Philippines and his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. His work has appeared in High Chair, Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Toad Suck Review, Lana Turner, and Boston Review. He has received the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Prize, a Lannan Foundation Scholarship at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. His first book Throng will be published by Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books in 2012.
Jose Edmundo Ocampo Reyes was born and raised in the Philippines, and holds degrees from Ateneo de Manila University and Columbia University. His poems and translations have appeared in Circumference, The Hudson Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Natural Bridge, Philippine Studies, Ploughshares, and Rattle; have been anthologized in The Powow River Anthology (Ocean Publishing, 2006) and Contemporary Voices from the East (W. W. Norton, 2007); and have been featured on Poetry Daily. He is the recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award and the Der-Hovanessian Translation Prize.
Marc Gaba is the author of the poetry collection Have (Tupelo Press); the chapbooks How Sound Becomes a Name and Nouveau Bored; and Atomic Neutral, a single-edition volume of poetry encased in a sculpture as an integral part of the exhibit Birdsounds. He won a Palanca Award for poetry in 1998 and the Boston Review Poetry Contest in 2006. He was a Dorset Prize and Faber-Castell Art Award finalist in 2008, and was nominated for an Ernst & Young exhibit and the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2010. He has taught creative writing and art appreciation at De La Salle University and the University of the Philippines.
