Lumbering Giants

INTRO:

There are moments when the present touches something buried so deeply in memory that the two become indistinguishable. A typhoon approaching Metro Manila brought back another kind of waiting—the rumors, the nighttime searches, the towns named one after another, and the fear of a seventeen-year-old wondering when the lumbering thing would finally reach him.

By Vincent R. Pozon

Sometimes the leaves jump off
their cliffs giddy and glib,
but the wind is in a mood:
sometimes the airport is within earshot,
the scream of planes becomes
carpet for the horns of trains
from the horizon of hearing,
a busyness far away,
now near only because the wind,
brow askant, looked my way,
and with a grunt, shifted slightly,
eyes on me.

The day's mood moves to a pause
and then to eerie, no sirens
from the sky: the planes and dogs
vanish from hearing, cut clean.
I search for the giddy leaves
and they stare back like pictures.

It is a calm that forbids sleep:
‘Hagupit is headed
straight for Metro Manila.’
Large in its swath, headed
straight for me, eyes on me,
first a typhoon and then a super,
lumbering towards me.

Seventeen years old in 1972,
on my haunches in a corner
waiting for whispers:
the towns near me have fallen,
one after the other.
‘They are zoning in Taytay’;
‘they are zoning in Marikina,’
lumbering towards me,
eyes on me.

The whispers burned of a coming storm:
‘They are zoning in Mandaluyong.’
Men lined up under a moon,
roused from rural sluggishness,
the village, now wide-eyed,
lit up like during a fire.
The uniformed, they bark,
these dogs of the dark
bark like gods, they wear
old badges but new bravado.

Seventeen years old
at a time three could not meet
without looking over their shoulders,
wary of the ice cream vendor
with the military haircut.

The dogs comb the nights and towns
like crackling fires and distant firetrucks.
My father knows that I have been feeding
on nothing more than fear;
he helps me hide the Lenin,
Proudhon, Gramsci in plastic bags,
helps me bury them in a well.
‘They are zoning in Taguig.’

It has started to rain in Makati,
lumbering towards me,
eyes on me,
but then the mood moves to a pause
and then to eerie.
They did not comb Pasig,
and Hagupit vanishes from hearing.

Weren’t you worried? I asked my wife.
‘Shh, I might burn the food,’ said
the lady poking at her tablet,
playing Cooking Fever.