Hall of Geckos

From blank wall to the other blanks bounce

Croaks of the elderly echoing the same stage

Hall of cinematic acrobatic lizard schemes.

The faded flag is draped over the coffin.

Above the torso peeks the cosmetic face, oblivious

To the gecko’s ceiling antics, begins to gather dust.

Tok ten times while the curved tail slaps the wall

Panel. We forecast our fortune by the alternate fall

Of the tok. Each exercise ends in smelling wax.

Coffee is served liberally like animosities.

Rivalries and covetousness lurk in the funeral smoke.

The lizard with the hugest eyes drops its wet reminder.

Ten geckos in unison croaking alternately yes or no

Scatter immortality and greatness from the plastic chairs

Out into the black, mocking the agile deft lawyer

The sons daughters kin the wake repels true

Feelings toward lizards crawling upturned the ceiling

Of the wide hall usual with cinema ridicule.

Salute to the people inside the hall to the grave face

Inside the coffin to the flag that accompanies it below

The earth is the hoarse gecko’s final tune, our fate-mate.

Clovis Nazareno and

the mananambal of Loon

Excerpt from Dr. Marjorie Evasco’s paper titled "Articulations of the Sacred in Three Boholano Poets" (the other two being Ulysses Aparece of Inabanga and Anthony Incon of Loboc).

* * *

The second poet whose works I would like to present is Clovis Nazareno. In my interview with him on his practice of the craft of poetry, I found out that he started writing poetry while in UP Diliman in 1979, under the guidance of teachers like Philippine National Artist for Literature Francisco "Franz" Arcellana, Gémino Abad, Alejandrino Hufana and Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio. Ever since then, Nazareno has published two chapbooks of poetry on the now-legendary Simeon Lugo, and won three major Carlos Palanca awards for his collections of poetry, namely: Horns of the World and Other Poems (1988, third place, under the pen name ‘Dodong’); Fear in the World and Other Poems (1989, third place, under the pen name ‘Ondoy’); and The Link Immemorial (1994, first place, under the pen name ‘Araceli’).

It is in the 1989 collection Fear in the World and Other Poems where Nazareno explores the world of the mananambal, an unseen world of supernatural beings. In Boholano folklore, it is believed that should one of these beings get angry with a person, that person will get sick. To heal the person, the mananambal should be able to 1) name the act of transgression, 2) name the sacred being that inhabited the space that was transgressed, and 3) name the disease and the antidote.

Nazareno’s poems, however, assert the syncretic overlap of this ancient world and worldview with that of the contemporary world and worldview. For instance, the fourth poem in the collection is "Manhak" and it begins with the epigraph which blends fact with fiction since it is said to be from a "1979 countryside report" that says: "This bird or beast of the night/ has caused innumerable miscarriages/ as vitamin-deficiency has." Right away, the ear catches the ironic tone in the voice of the poem that moves in one breath from the magical image to the contemporary idiom of medical diagnosis.

Must be as ancient as the hint of woman

Who lurks beyond every doorstep:

This whorl of wings, shriek and laughter

Of darkness at forest’s edge.

Fear foreshadowing childbirth

Stalks the wife while the husband

Meets the dark threat

Of the bird of death

With a bowl of onion and salt:

These must be the only defenses:

Accoutrements of the ancient earth.

Against danger outside every door

Hastening to suck the child,

Foreclosing the future…

The image of the manhak is female, perhaps in myth symbolism the dark aspect or döppelgänger of the childbearing mother herself. The antidote to the wife’s fear is the "bowl of onion and salt," common ingredients from her kitchen prepared this time by the husband. But what is this bird of death as the poem sees it? Just as fear is an inchoate sensation, the manhak is "danger outside every door/ Hastening to suck the child,/ Foreclosing the future…" The shamanic voice in the poem affirms, inspite of the irony embedded in the poverty of rural families, that "These must be the only defenses:/ Accoutrements of the ancient earth…