Trill & Mordent

From Luisa Igloria's soon to be released, "Trill & Mordent" WordTech Editions, September 2005; 2004 Editions Poetry Prize Runner-up.

IF THE POEM WERE GLASS

Kung kristal ang tula, manginginig akong hawakan.
(If the poem were glass, I would tremble from merely holding, from being held.)
- Rebecca Añonuevo


Who was it said each thing that meets
the other meets itself ? Meeting what quickens
though is tinged with regret, I am the face
that floats beneath the water of itself,
that counts the passing stars and branches
overhead, wanting to attend to their beauty
before their waning, wanting to forestall
the eventual farewell for as long as the world
grants pardon. If I close my eyes the faraway
mountains return: their outlines of pine, each
outcropping of rock etched against the silence
which holds what cannot unburden its heart
completely to language, to falling leaves,
to water. Thin flute of crystal—If nothing else,
at least the gift of being seen, especially before
the pour of amber. Taste of the fermented
grape, preserved, transformed: extracted wealth
that might have never been, that slides from one
scale now to the other— from glass to tipped-back
throat so only warmth remains, as in that rim
that flushes at the border of night and day. Before
the world is flooded with plainness, before the vines
return to their patient work among the trellises.
Before the careful hand rinses the glass and returns it to
the paneled cabinet, where other fragile vessels
rest in attention— aware of how the slightest motion
could set the whole transparent shelf to ringing.



BRAID

Bound like a double helix, two strands embrace
a life of thirds. What separates, what brings together?

I'm bound to the summons of everyday: each graveled surface, its
raised letters. Slivers escape between windows shuttered together,

unable to hold back a spill of light. Closer to their source, could I
not want for more. Shards picked from the beach, singly or together—

pages of sand, dense novels with tiny print. Even the bottle's discarded cork,
sliced thin, reveals hives and cellular structures, complex ties alive together

with already disintegrating matter. In the end, a simple picture: shadow of a curve,
gray diffraction photograph where strands have overlapped and together,

form an x. I read there are atoms which like to sit next to each
other. Only a life, narrow as a grosgrain ribbon; its moments together

answering another. Surely a generosity absolves;
evidence grows richer by the hour, the crystallized forms together

with undiscovered parts of more mysterious nature. New
knowledge supplants old, in science and history together

with all the arts which hollow out this space— How it enfolds
all that's been given, how it revises. What design? Together

in the same crucible, the heat beneath the glass; quick melting
mercury. The iron ball and feather dropped from a tower, together

gathering speed— O, but I recognize that careening, the equal effects of
the heart's turning toward the same gravity, that spiraling and marvelous together.