Edgar b. Maranan
Christmas Stories 2009
1. Baguio at Yuletide, as the years passed
Shops down Session Road had cardboard
crèches, boughs of plastic holly decked
the bubble-lit windows of Indian bazaars,
décored with spray frost and sale price tags.
Disharmony was only in the throat of babes
who sang Adeste in a tongue not even Latin
jingling their bells as they rode snow sleighs
with their pockets jangling, then back home
to the jungle warren of some shantytown.
The natives—because we styled ourselves
bright pioneers and settlers—were huddled
on pavement and market steps, frazzled coats
wrapped tight round wiry bodies, they’d come
to buy provisions, some to beg for Christian alms
for it was Christmas and the hearts of men
were full of the good cholesterol of love
through a season of whisky and Chinese ham.
2. Madonna and Child, Sta. Mesa
Near Nagtahan Bridge
a sudden crying startles the late-night
theatergoer in a traffic jam.
The tot clings to the woman
while two gamins trail her, the three
holding shards of some hoped for value
as they poke around the drum
whose plastic innards spill out promise
of a late repast, or tomorrow’s meal.
Gay December comes
That old song in his head
Tralala lala lalala
That was years ago, a child’s Christmas
It’s the happiest month
‘I know, I know’, that the children love
And the flies sound the beat
upon the drum this brood clings to,
on another year’s December night.
3. And two came from the East
In September, a swirling eye of evil
visited my low-lying neighbors in their huts
of wood and tin with papered-over cracks,
old tarpaulins, but these were no more than
nomads’ mangers and stables upon earth
that crumbled at the onset of the flood.
Bad tidings at their worst, rivers of life
rising with the floating dread all night
and through that day of the drowned or lost.
Its dominion spread to all, even past
the gates and up the stairs of the better
habitations, chasing the poor and rich
to the shrinking islands of wet rooftops.
In October, the second visitor lingered
and toyed with our fears, looping around
like a ruler crazed by the thought of leaving.
From the east coast to the west, debris
of towns and remaindered harvests,
while the mountains sagged and filled
with earth the mouths, the stricken eyes
of those we knew as guiltless beings.
In less than a hundred days, their homes
would have been dripping with lights,
festooned with cellophane stars of hope.
Strange, this advent the Lord prepares
for the faithful of a land called chosen.
(Montage of the Orion constellation, from NASA-APOD, and the acacia canopy at UP Diliman campus)
