Naga Poetry

We were not literary accomplice: we did not talk about submitting our works at the same time. That (my) generation never really talked about their works with each other. When the issue came out, all of us were surprised to see our works sharing the space, under the title of our city. The five of us shared one school. Romeo Alcala Cruz, Nestor S. Felix,  Elsa Mampo, Christine Azcarraga, and I all went to Ateneo de Naga. All of us were fresh out of it but not yet in the real world. True, we were all working, I believe, but we were all caught still in the romance of daring youth. There were two other contributors: Conrado B. Beloso who was described as having sent in his poems from the Holy Rosary Major Seminary and Edwin Rivera Abayon who was said to have "spent some time in the Holy Rosary Major Seminary."

Did Beloso continue to become a priest? Did Abayon go back again to the seminary? I would not know unless somebody who reads this column would tell us what happened to them. What I can tell you are those things they wrote. The emotions seem to come from ancient wounds and the pains are terrifically mature. Were they some of the students who wrote those dark, dark essays, which prompted the late Socorro Federis Tate to sigh and ask, "Why do young people always talk of death?"

Beloso was metaphysical without being ponderous: Notice the leaves:/by way of an efficient/causality/they readily admit/each other's grace/and depth."The word "dark" recurs like a scar in his poetry.

Abayon had both sweetness and bitterness: They pass like dreams/a procession of strange angels/in my darkening heaven...This poem dedicated to a certain Mrs. Marilou A. Valdemorro and "her sweet angel bopeep" ends with this slight tremor: as angels they can only pray/their litanies of wishes and dreams.

I do know a lot about the other poets, too. Romeo Cruz was Romy Curz of the large Cruz clan in Dayangdang. His poem was about that place: Here you see lolas asking about the vacancy of wisdom/in windows. Romy was never scared of the quick shift in atmosphere and sound. Listen to this line: But you see the old beggar with the toothless/smile, intimations of helplessness in dead-ends./Recoil from the gargoyle in her smile - Dayangdang.

Nono Felix was noted for those caustic lines, full of wit but always with faultless lyricism. Haiku-like sometimes, his poetry could be short but full of lust for anything in life. In "Coup d'etat": The snake makes eyes at/the opening of a hole/beyond a stretch of grass. He continued: The rat atop/nibbles at the stalk/of a bunch of green coconuts. He ended with this: In a pool behind a rock/silent frogs are keen about the outcome.

I do not know if Christine Azcarraga remembers her poem, where she rhapsodizes about the afternoon. It is a simple poem, angst-free and guiltless, about a time where there still remain the/traces of a sinking sun,/sadly silhouetted against a whimpering returning villager.

Elsa Mampo could always write the saddest of lines: in the stillness of the night/you witness a parade of faces/while i, in the dark silence/ peer about - to find/ I have forgotten your face.

Both Elsa and Christine went on to become lawyers. Both are now judges in court.

Elsa went through a circuitous path of finishing a post-graduate degree in Comparative Literature in Ateneo de Manila, with the late Doreen Fernandez as her adviser. Her thesis was on the Dotoc of Canaman.  She also attended the usual workshop that most writers go through. The last time we talked lengthily I was trying to convince her to come one night so we could recite her poems but she said she had forgotten her poetry and her being a poet. She was willing though to send buckets of beer and wine if only to celebrate other poets.

Nono Felix has the entire Asia and some parts of the globe for his office. Each time we meet at the bus terminal in Manila, he is either back from Thailand or on his way to London or New Delhi.  In Naga, you would see him having lunch at the inestimable Garden Restaurant, fully concentrated on his "kinunot." On Sundays, his poetry is in the cockpit.

As for Romy Cruz, he is in the States, cool as ever, according to old friends.  His poem about Naga is recklessly priceless. Listen then to these lines:  Eggs have a five-minute frying history...Coffee, a seven-minute heating longevity. In Naga, life moves on.

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