Cirilo Bautista's Selected Poems

Being Blue in Switzerland
I walk along the shore of Lake Lucerne
The sunlight glimmers on the water 
and pigeons eat crumbs under the trees.

The wind is cold, so I button my black jacket and tighten my woolen mufflers.
Dew still clings to the red and yellow tulips.

Lovers embrace on the wooden piers while slowly
the boat from Gotthard sails into port.
Two swans and a duck float near 
the piers, seeking the bread a man has thrown
into the water, there under the blue sky.

I feel lonely by the shore of Lake Lucerne.
I hold my head high and whistle a tune.

The Fountains at Villa D'Este, Tivoli
As if he owned the ocean.
Here, one man’s dream explodes in 
water, carved in splashing splendour
by lion teeth, angel mouth, breasts
of virgins that do not rest. Day
and night the liquid sizzles, channeling
the dream from terrace to terrace,
from stone to stone, till it gathers to a pool
that caresses the fish. My brain swims
with the fish as they trace their antique
silence to a thousand spouts
and fountains, then back to the pool again….
One dies again, also, bursting through
the skin, and flings his wingless wars
to the sun, broken and raining sadness
on the soul; but just for a moment,
like spumes in air, or the swing of swans
to shore, no longer, no better. Bodies
bloom and reel in space, juggled and spun by
light, by water, to flash a brilliance,
no longer, no better. Was this what he
thought, he who planned the garden of his mind,
to freeze that brilliance? Did he, in despair,
command the water to move his mind
to each crevice, each pool, each silent
sibilance, each flowing,
each song of many endings, each murmur,
while he slept, as if he owned the ocean?

Offering for Picasso
This poem
is for Picasso
who didn't have hair and looked like cheese.

He divided up
the bodies of people
and a new form of art was born in the world.

A circle of yellow
became the sun
a rainbow sprouted in an intestine exposed,
a lost bicycle
when pounded and earrings thrown
let grow in the world to a thousand green beans:

Now that he's gone
Picasso, what machine
would keep order in our dreams? What charm
would vaccinate
against the blood of war and abandonment
so that the tattered world would again be beautiful?

Oh How To Find Silence In the World
Being spotted in the color of skin,
why I take care in San Francisco,
waiting for the bus to Iowa.
They say racial prejudice is strong,

Negros and not whites kawawa,
and because of this they will revolt.
I shiver and shiver from fear and hunger
because I just landed from Tokyo.

A Negro came into the station—
naka-African hairdo; he holds a small
whip: it’s scary to look, so
I did not look at him. Kumakalansing
the metal on the strings of his shoes

and he shouts, “Peace, brothers!” Smiled showing
white teeth. Looked at me—
maybe he laughed at what he saw—

a tiny dayuhan, dark and from
some lupalog.

Upside down
my insides went in fright and pulled
a cigarette so the redness of my face

wouldn’t show. I nahalata
that the Whites there too were quiet
so quiet, unable to speak in front
of that Negro. Only when he left returned

the normalcy in the station—others
read again, neighbors gossiped again,
laughter, the janitor sweeped again.

After a while that Negro passed again
two white Americanas on each arm,
blonde, their beauty with no equal.

The janitor stopped sweeping.
I thought, “So this is racial prejudice.”