SEA STORIES

Poems by Merlie Alunan

(The author is a Filipina poet and professor in Literature at the University of the Philippines - Tacloban and Silliman University in Dumaguete in the Philippines. She survived the super typhoon Yolanda in November and has since lived in Dumaguete. This poem is quite a foreboding of things to come in Central Philippines.)
I. OLD WOMEN IN OUR VILLAGE

Old women in my village say
the sea is always hungry, they say,
that’s why it comes without fail
to lick the edges of the barrier sand,
rolling through rafts of mangrove,smashing its salt-steeped flood
on guardian cliffs,cv breaking itself
against rock faces, landlocks, hills,
reaching through to fields, forests,
grazelands, villages by the water,
country lanes, towns, cities where
people walk about as in a dream,
deaf to the wind shushing
the sea’s sibilant sighing

somedaywecome
somedaywecome
someday....

[caption id="attachment_3069" align="alignleft" width="230"] ML Kuker's Magpaparos (shell gatherers). Proceeds of this painting go to the survivors of super typhoon Yolanda.[/caption]

Only the old women hear
the ceaseless warning, watching
grain drying in the sun,
or tending the boiling pot
or gutting a fish for the fire, fingers
bloody, clothes stained, scent of the ocean
rising from the mangled flesh into their lungs.
Nights, as they sit on their mats
rubbing their knees, waiting for ease
to come, and sleep, they hear the sea
endlessly muttering as in a dream

someday someday someday....

 

 

 

Nudging the old men beside them,
their mates—empty-eyed seafarers,
each a survivor of storms, high waves,
and the sea’s vast loneliness,
now half-lost in their old age
amid the household clutter—
old women in my village
nod to themselves and say,
one uncharted day, the sea
will open its mouth and drink in

a child playing on the sand,
a fisherman with his nets,
great ships laden with cargo,
and still unsated, they say,
suck up cities towns villages—
one huge swallow to slake its hunger.

As to when or how it would happen,
who knows, the women say, but this much
is true--no plea for kindness can stop it—
nodding their heads this way and that,
tuning their ears to the endless mumbling....

somedaywecomewecomewecome
somedaywecomewecomewecome
somedaysomedaysomeday

[caption id="attachment_3070" align="alignnone" width="300"] The Boat. ML Kuker[/caption]

 

(Magpaparos is still on sale. Please mail the artist at monica_lunot@yahoo.com if interested. Proceeds go to Gota de Leche Manila for the survivors of the Yolanda supertyphoon. - Ed.)