And the rest is syntax
The priests have invoked the public to pray for fairer weather, or at least for the rains not to be so destructive, and spare us from nature’s wrath, and deliver us from evil as in the “Oratio imperata.” It is an invocation on behalf of the flood victims to be lifted from their trials.
Released without any fanfare earlier this year was Prayer Seasons: Poems and Paintings (St. Paul’s/Aria Editions 2011) by Hansel B. Mapayo, SSP, and it includes a poem titled “Monsoon Rain Prayer.” It could well be Brother Hansel’s own imperata:
“Take our tears/ Oh Font of grace./ Our siblings knock at our door/ Asking for warm broth./ Don’t you see the empty/ Bowls on our table?/ Bodies, nameless and faceless,/ Still float in our rivers./ Our leaders continue to gaze/ At their white-washed gates./ But the psalmist says,/ “The floods of waters may reach high,/ But him they shall not reach./ You are my hiding place, O Lord;/ You save me from distress.”/ Cast your blessing as we come/ To you with joined palms. Breathe in your spirit/ To strengthen our faith./ Like pillars, though bent./ We shall brave the rains.”
In her introduction the poet Marjorie Evasco celebrates the work of the poet-painter, how it marks not only time but also place, chronicling the Society of Saint Paul brother’s travels in Latin America and Europe, where epiphanies indeed lay in ambush, such as the one that waylaid the original St. Paul on the road to Damascus.
And the paintings, what handsome understated canvases they are: “Shalom, My Friends,” depicting three childhood friends on a leafy staircase, one of them holding an umbrella; “Descending Mt. Avila,” whose play of ambient mountain landscape requires the viewer to do his own decoding of tree and shadow; “Mt. Kitanglad,” with its purple hues and offbeat yellows offers a sweeping view at once breathtaking and perhaps ominous; “In Memory of Trees” with its red and green leaves reflected on a still translucent lake.
This last painting faces a poem titled “As We Bring You to the Crematorium” dedicated to a late common friend, Edwin Ang:
“As we bring you to the crematorium,/ As we send you to your home./ What thoughts do I have of you?/ Your life is as transient as the river’s breath,/ And as palpable as the grains of the earth./ And what a joy to join the Potter,/ What pain to leave the vessel!”
Which reinforces what Evasco had said earlier of the poet, how the brother writes in the manner of the psalmists. But back to the paintings: “Going Home” has a little boy seemingly lost in a garden path, but maybe not; “Women by Lake Titicaca, Bolivia” employs a rustic scene of women folk in the countryside not uncommon in third world countries; “View of a Garden from a Spanish Colonial House” reveals how the painter prefigures light and how too he perceives it to be at the center of things; “Inspired by Canadian Quarry” is another water mixable oil on canvas that has pink and green weeping willows reflected on still water; “Ken’s Country Cottage, Romania” has an inspired view of a red tile-roofed house in a European countryside; then finally the cover, title painting “Prayer Seasons,” a five-paneled work that spans the cycle of life, death, rebirth in a subtly changing representation of trees.
The title poem itself would get one thinking of the poet-painter’s concept of time, or at least the passing of seasons, in a five-part mini suite demarcated by Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, and Easter.
Cirilo Bautista, another one adept in both painting and poetry, once said that all poets can paint, but not all painters can write poetry. This controversial observation was made at the time of start of the “Chromatext” exhibits of the 1980s, when a group of poets that included Bautista exhibited in galleries. This understandably was not well taken by some who were strictly painters, and touched off a firestorm of debate. Others shrugged it off, saying that’s just Cirilo being Cirilo.
In the same wise, we can say Prayer Seasons is just Brother Hansel being Brother Hansel, though at times content (poem) can barely keep up with form (painting). Then again the reader must remember that verse requires a certain patience for discernment, as nothing is revealed straightaway, save for the breathing of every blade of grass.
The paintings on the other hand have an immediacy only natural for the visual world, and the medium of oil on fiberglass might even suggest a striking resemblance when face to face with the actual work, as if the viewer too were blinded by light on the road to a personal Damascus.
Which is not to say that Brother Hansel preaches, no far from it. These poems and paintings impart a triptych of love, devotion, surrender. And the rest is syntax.
And a bit of “Warmth”:
“Today, even if the rain/ smash the trees’ crowns/ sending unto the ground/ leaves and twigs and boughs/ harsh with the wind’s brush,/ I open the door and windows/ to welcome the gust’s thud/ and the mist’s light touches/ certain that deep within,/ as I think of your lips,/ neck, and breast,/ will emerge a bud/ stretching into a tendril, creeping towards the clearing sky.”
