From a book
There will be times I will post poems written by local and foreign masters as a way to quicken your and my blood. Or to slow it down. I am nowhere near my goal of taking up my desired M.A. course, and the idea of preparing a splendid portfolio to submit and passing the admission exam fills me with dread so much it makes me catatonic.
But words do have a way of easing themselves into my system that I always feel utterly alive after every reading. Here’s a poem from the book One Hundred Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905 of which one of my poems (not without slight conceit, hee), is also part of.
Hunger
Bino A. Realuyo
(copyrights revert to UP Press and to the poet)
This poem must be written now, on this hour,
this one sitting, the sudden rush of thought—of you.
You again: my charcoal drawings in the air,
dance of limbs, not seen but smelled,
images forming from a verge of thought—
a scent of another Sunday full of longing for food.
To eat breakfast, alone, and to know that I
have cooked for you once: eggs, pancake, honey,
that I have eaten not only what I made but
also you: you, tasting better each time I swallowed.
Your taste, a disappearing act, the fear of knowing
that you will be yesterday’s dish, a name in a book
of the forgotten, the silent partner that ate off my plate,
the one who watched me cook, naked in hunger.
