by Cirilo Bautista | Translated by José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes
Don’t you know that a mountain is nothing but smoke?
Don’t you know that a thought is nothing but foam?
Don’t you know that sackfuls of rice will go bad
when they’re hidden deep down in the breast of a poem?
Make a dragon swoop down from the mountain of smoke
that your thoughts made of foam may be put to the test;
make a throne out of rice that’s been kept in a nook
that a God may be wrought from the poem in your breast.
Translated from the Tagalog by José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes
Cirilo Bautista was a Filipino poet and professor who was highly awarded, the most prominent of these being given a place in the Order of National Artists of the Philippines. He wrote a large volume of poetry, fiction, and literary theory, and taught at De la Salle University in Manila.
José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes was born and raised in the Philippines, and holds degrees from Ateneo de Manila and Columbia Universities. His poems and translations have appeared in Circumference, The Hudson Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Natural Bridge, Philippine Studies, Ploughshares, and Rattle; have been anthologized in The Powow River Anthology (Ocean Publishing, 2006) and Contemporary Voices from the East (W. W. Norton, 2007); and have been featured on Poetry Daily. He is the recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award and the Der-Hovanessian Translation Prize. (Photo credit: image courtesy of Rhino)