From the Depths
Those who live in the deep are translucent.
They could be pierced by light
If there were light.
Here are the ships that sank.
Clean, cleaned through.
Here are thumbs of burnt-out candles.
Here is a missing trinket.
Here the crashed head of a comet.
Nothing shifts but these the undead.
Excavating.
Here is the heart of gravity.
Here is the speech of the chopped-off tongue.
Here is the deepest exhalation—
“Don’t light what’s left of the wick.
It will steal our last breath from us.”
Lilith
In the same way she would collect
Drops of semen wasting
On beds after sex and beating off,
She is licking her wounds.
Countless, her offspring,
Who do not look for fathers
Nor suckle from her breast.
They do not have navels.
She mounts trees.
Rocks on them as on the laps
Of husbands and young men hard
Near dawn.
The upright man sharpens his dagger,
A totem against her when alone in bed.
On it, her name is carved.
Lilith. Adversary and weapon.
Christ in Hell
No hesitation in his steps.
He walked on water.
He will not sink in fire.
Around him, tormented souls
Jostle for position to keep their faces
Unerased.
Grasp at each other to stay afloat.
Drown whomever they clutch.
But no one really drowns.
Then Christ felt the vertiginous
Memory of heaven.
Slowly, he steps on the faces
As countless hands strain to reach
His robe’s hem.
But all they can hold on to
Are words.
from Us from all Evil
Allan Popa
translated from the Filipino by Marc Gaba, Jose Edmundo Ocampo Reyes, and Allan Popa
Listen to the poems read in the original Filipino by the poet:
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).
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.
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.
