Gémino H. Abad (1939 – ), University Professor emeritus of literature and creative writing, is a poet, fictionist, and literary critic and historian, with various honors and awards. In 2009, he received Italy’s Premio Feronia (“Foreign author category”) for his poetry, later published as a bi-lingual edn., Dove le parole non si spezzano (Roma: Edizioni Ensemble, 2015). Where No Words Break: New Poems and Past (2014) is his tenth poetry collection, and Past Mountain Dreaming (2010), his ninth of critical essays; he has two collections of short stories, Orion’s Belt (1996) and A Makeshift Sun (2001). He is known also for his three-volume anthology of Filipino poetry in English from 1905 to the 1990s – Man of Earth (1989), A Native Clearing (1993), and A Habit of Shores (1999); and a six-volume anthology of Filipino short stories in English from 1956 to 2008 – Upon Our Own Ground (2008), Underground Spirit (2010), and Hoard of Thunder (2012). He obtained his Ph.D. in English at the University of Chicago in 1970, and continues to teach at U.P. where he has served as Secretary of the University, Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and Director of the U.P. Creative Writing Center (now an Institute).
I Teach My Child
I
I teach my child
To survive.
I begin with our words,
The simple words first
And last.
They are hardest to learn.
Words like home,
Or friend, or to forgive.
These words are relations.
They are difficult to bear;
Their fruits are unseen.
Or words that promise
Or dream.
Words like honor, or certainty,
Or cheer.
Rarest of sound,
Their roots run deep;
These are words that aspire,
They cast no shade.
These are not words
To speak.
These are the words
Of which we consist,
[cont.: NO stanza]
Indefinite,
Without other ground.
II
My child
Is without syllables
To utter him,
Captive yet to his origin
In silence.
By every word
To rule his space,
He is released;
He is shaped by his speech.
Every act, too,
Is first without words.
There’s no rehearsal
To adjust your deed
From direction of its words.
The words are given,
But there’s no script;
Their play is hidden,
We are their stage.
These are the words
That offer to our care
Both sky and earth,
[cont.: NO stanza]
The same words
That may elude our acts.
If we speak them
But cannot meet their sound,
They strand us still
In our void,
Blank like the child
With the uphill silence
Of his words’ climb.
And so,
I teach my child
To survive.
I begin with our words,
The simple words first
That last.
THAT SPACE OF WRITING
And when I write, I want the largest space,
Of such breadth, of such length as this world
Never had of forests nor virgin paper,
Where the words never were, their script accursed,
but only now
Descending to cry, Freedom!
Then my hands should never feel there were walls
That grow their ominous lichen between my fingers,
Nor my elbows graze the wild beards of rocks
That cathedral my tribe wailing for their god,
but only now
Descending without speech!
The words that never were create anew my race,
Their mornings stand clear where ancient skies cascade
Down the singing gorges of the wind. My hands
Draw again the map that alien voyages had wrecked,
O long ago
Descending with Cross and Krag!
[continue: NEW stanza]
My elbows swing where rooms void their space,
And I laugh to see the weird syllables of speech
Open their abyss, and stride across the heartland
Of my people’s silences where their eyes pour
like sunlight
Descending to claim the earth!
O when I write again, the words of any tongue
Shall find no tillage in our blood, nor my hands
Scruple to choke their weed, for first must they bleed
Their scripture in our solitude and yield to our
scythe’s will
Descending to carve our heart.
WHERE NO WORDS BREAK
(After People Power Revolution, 22-24 February 1986)
Where no words break
I thirst no longer for truth,
am very still, at peace.
Time was
the truth was future perfect,
but I no longer seek,
all my pieces I have collected
and let no words break
Where no words break
my thirst is quenched
by every spring,
the spring is everywhere.
Time was
I strove for truth,
the passion grew,
but words could not appease.
Truth had no bounds
and let no words break
[continue: NEW stanza]
The President whose State was a Lie,
the soldier who did not fire,
people shouting, words dying …
Or fruit of achiote,
snails after, things swarming …
Once these were truth’s sundries,
its daily exhibits,
but did not make a book
where no words break
I thirst no longer for truth,
Am, without words composed.
Our ticks have lost their itch,
the tocks of doom have grown serene,
I no longer even roam
where no words break
