Dumaguete Nights

(3 poems written sometime in May 1991

during the Silliman National Writers Workshop

at Dumaguete, Negros Oriental)

(photo by Storm Crypt from Flickr)

Night of The Rabble-Rousers

Under a mercury lamp

In front of Father Tropa’s white house,

By the sea off Dumaguete,

Gather a crowd of bystanders

Around bible-clutching ministers,

Local sages, native philosophers,

And self-styled prophets of doom

Engaged in a free-for-all match

Of rhetorics, semantics,

Home-brewed knowledge, and folk beliefs

About the myths and mysteries

Ever shrouding the life of Christ.

From a distance,

On top of the concrete seawall,

Over heads and shoulders of the crowd,

I watch with amused delight

The endless bursts of wisdom,

Strange revelations,

Esoteric facts and fiction

That send strong surge of friction

Electrifying the soggy summer night.

Suddenly the lamp expires.

The rabble-rousers do not mind.

The demagoguery goes on unperturbed.

Behind me I hear the sea waves laugh

As they lap the craggy rocks.

Swish. Swoosh. Swash.

Even the quarter moon strikes a sheepish smile

As a balut vendor cries his eggs out

And a tricycle sputters fast  -

Its passengers shouting

Obscenities at the crowd.

Night At The Breakwater

By the breakwater near the pier,

A mother and child in rags

Sleep soundly in a battered pushcart

Parked behind makeshift stalls

Selling puso, tocino barbeque, and beer

As disco music blare

From cassette players everywhere

And tricycles roar and sputter,

Weaving in and out of the crowded pier.

Passengers. Well-wishers. Bystanders.

Vendors. Hawkers. Peddlers.

Farmers. Traders. Stevedores.

Boxes. Crates. Cargoes of all sorts.

Wares and merchandise.

Tons of copra. Sacks of sugar. Rice.

Baskets of fruits and vegetables.

Clucking fowls. Wailing livestock.

A lively night market or so it seems.

Another night of pier overload.

On a roughly hewn bench I sit.

Prop my elbows on a weathered table.

And ask for a bottle of ice-cold beer

Plus three sticks of tocino barbeque.

I do away with the grimy glass,

Preferring to guzzle it out

Straight from the brown bottle’s mouth

As I relish hot bits of roasted pork

Soaked in peppery soy sauce and vinegar.

The guys beside me are getting loud.

One kicks a dog by its ass

That sends it scampering into the crowd.

Another one starts to sing and dance,

Holding an invisible mike in his hand.

The other one bursts in laughter

As he sprays with beer-laced urine

The unsuspecting rat nibbling morsels

Below the littered breakwater.

But to me, after the sixth bottle,

The moon appears to be a beer bubble

Tossed up by the frothing sea,

Now hovering between the two dark horns  –

The Cuernos de Negros,

Vaguely lending a dull sheen

On thin blotches of salt

That have surreptitiously formed on my skin.

Perfumed Dumaguete Night

Rambling down a dimly-lit street,

I hear a plaintive kundiman strain

Wafting in the night’s humid air.

I stop

And silently stand

Under the greenish bloom

Of an ylang-ylang tree

Whose sinuous fragrance

Reach out delicately

To the sad tinklings of ivory keys

Trailing out of a lace curtain

Between capiz window panes

And hesitantly clinging

To the curvilinear iron grille.

The stream of smoke

From the cigarette between my fingers

Curl up in ephemeral vines;

And, by the incandescent glow

That filters through the square

Translucent capiz shells,

Intertwine with scent

And harmony in mid-air -

Only to gently fade away

As a tartanilla clip-clops

With lovers

On a nocturnal promenade

By the boulevard,

By the sea.