The bamboo creaks when the wind
from the heavens whispers to its green blades
It creaks like the hinges of my dead grandma’s boudoir
that has stood rusting in the garage
begging for oil and sometimes it begs
to be remembered with a candle or two
It also creaks as Nong Rene cuts its shoots
with a bolo one summer afternoon
The bamboo cries but pliant as it is, it conforms
to the walls of the pigpen that shelters
his sons matriculation come June
It creaks as well for little Mikay
whose hair is spread on her mother’s lap
Like a warning to keep her mane clean
or else the minute winged parasites shall
fly her away to the bamboo tops
It gives the spooky rasp when Inday Amor
passes by lest she has forgotten to say her panabi.
Or else tomorrow she will wake up
with a fever and unexplainable maladies
brought by the duwende who resides on the anthill at the bamboo’s foot
And the bamboo also creaks at night when the moon is round.
As two shadows sway under its foliage unwary of accidental spectators and nine months after a bamboo cracks to yield a newly born Eve.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
a pliable shrub that attunes to the demand of life, its nature that equates resiliency with our culture. a very good poem indeed! 10