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Book Review: Mythological Woman and the Prose Poem in Barbara Jane Reyes’s Diwata

Mariejoy San Buenaventura1

Barbara Jane Reyes, a Filipino- analysts. Diwata is the Filipino term for American poet, had her collection Diwata goddess, fairy, and nature spirit, and the published in 2010 by the New York-based word is derived from devata, the Hindi word BOA Editions Ltd. as part of their American - most likely originally Sanskrit - for deity Poets Continuum series. Despite the slimness (‚Devata,‛ n.d.). Reyes employs all these of the volume – the epigraph, poems, and aspects of Diwata – goddess, fairy, and notes occupy sixty-seven A5-sized pages – it nature spirit – to portray Diwata as the contains an abundance of the worthwhile for universal, primordial, mythological Woman comparative mythologists and literary found in all mythologies, and as the

1Humanities and Languages Division, Mahidol University International College E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Ramkhamhaeng University Journal Humanities Edition Vol. 37 No. 1 194 representative very human Woman who, Diwata is also the dryad who takes as mate a through the unfolding of the ages, continues mortal man (Reyes, 2010, p. 20). Then as the to experience the same longings and sufferings. weaver who ‚weaves words into the fabric This is of much interest to the student of of the sky‛ (Reyes, 2010, p. 14), Diwata is a myth. For the student of poetry, Reyes’s uses version of Arachne, she who competed with of the prose poem, chant-like forms, and Athena in a weaving contest (Ovid, 2009, pp. multilingualism are a fascinating study. 141-145), and of Philomela, who, after her rapist had cut off her tongue to prevent her Mythological Woman from speaking of his crime, wove a tapestry As mythological Woman, Diwata’s to tell of her ordeal (Ovid, 2009, pp. 153- identity is fluid. In ‚Diwata,‛ a poem with 161). Diwata’s rival is not Athena but the eight sections (Reyes, 2010, pp. 14-21), and in male Christian god, and her ordeal is erasure ‚In the City, a New Congregation Finds Her‛ by Christianity. Furthermore, Diwata is the (pp. 64-65), she is the Mother Goddess, a deity mermaid in the five ‚Duyong‛ poems worshipped by ancient cultures all throughout (Reyes, 2010, pp. 29-33). Reyes uses the the tropics ages before the Spanish introduced Bahasa Malaysian/Indonesian word for the male Christian god to the Philippine mermaid, duyung, (‚Duyung,‛ n.d.) and not islands. One of these ancient planters’ first the Tagalog term, sirena, which obviously conceptions of divine power probably stemmed was borrowed from Castilian Spanish. Through from the miracle of a seed containing life this she places Diwata within the larger scope within it that with time rose above ground, of Malay mythology and acknowledges the a miracle paralleled by the capacity of a Philippines’ Malay heritage. woman’s body to nourish life within it and Diwata is also the dove whom the later give it birth (Campbell, 1987, p. 66). hawk abducts from her father’s celestial home

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(Reyes, 2010, pp. 14-21). Reyes uses the whose spirit hover[ed] over the ceremonies.‛ Tagalog word for hawk and capitalizes it, The man able to carry out human sacrifice - Lawin, personifying the hawk as a rapacious usually of an illegitimate son or a slave - god. According to a Philippine folktale, a attained the highest possible spiritual plane hawk proposes marriage to a hen who and social status, became ‚identified with the accepts the proposal and a ring. Reprimanded hovering hawk,‛ and could take the name by the rooster since she is already the Na-mbal, meaning ‚hawk‛ (Campbell, 1987, rooster’s wife, the flustered hen throws away pp. 447-450). the ring. When the hawk returns, the hawk Eve punishes her by condemning her to peck An intriguing incarnation of Diwata is always at the ground to search for the ring Eve, who speaks in different voices and takes (Cole, 2007, pp. 88-89). Reyes transforms on different personas. Reyes synthesizes the the hawk from a noble, authoritative bird Biblical stories of the creation of the world much too good for the foolish hen, into the and of Eve with the Philippine myth about personification of male rapaciousness and Maganda (Beautiful) the first woman, Malakas appetite. By doing so, Reyes subscribes to (Strong) the first man, and Manaul the god of the hawk’s larger role in the mythology of the wind who takes bird form. The epigraph the tropical Pacific islands. On the island of (Reyes, 2010, p. 9) features the two myths. Malekula in former times, the hawk was the God, as narrated in Genesis Chapter 2, puts deity supplicated through animal and human Adam into a deep sleep and creates Eve from sacrifices. The sacrifices were offered on a one of Adam’s ribs. Manaul, called ‚god of dolmen, over which there was a thatched the air and lord of the birds,‛ who was already roof. ‚The main beam of this roof terminate[d] present before creation when there was only in a carved image of the mythological hawk water, wind, and sky, and who instigated the

Ramkhamhaeng University Journal Humanities Edition Vol. 37 No. 1 196 fight between sea and sky that resulted in the in character of the two gods, these two myths creation of the Philippine islands (Eugenio, are also connected by their contrasting 2008, pp.8-9), pecks open the bamboo reed usages of the word ‚cleave,‛ severance and that contains Maganda and Malakas. Unlike adherence. In the Philippine myth, Manaul the Judeo-Christian God, Manaul does not cleaves the bamboo reed in half to release the create Maganda and Malakas; there seems to first man and woman. In the Genesis myth, be no explanation for their creation beyond the man cleaves to the woman in marriage. the bamboo’s innate fruitfulness. Malakas Reyes employs this double meaning to and Maganda, enclosed inside a bamboo prepare the reader for the rest of the book in reed, call out to Manaul to free them. He general but particularly for the opening hesitates to do this and only pecks at the poem, ‚A Genesis of We, Cleaved‛ (Reyes, bamboo to catch and eat a lizard that has 2010, pp. 11-12) climbed up it. However, this difference in This opening poem uses the structure role - releaser as opposed to creator - is not of the very beginning of Genesis. It is written as significant to Reyes as the fact that both in seven paragraphs that narrate the events of Manaul and the Judeo-Christian Creator God successive days in the birth of Maganda/ are beings of air, air that flies or hovers over Eve/Woman. The first paragraph starts with primordial water. Genesis starts ‚In the ‚In the beginning, a man of dust and fire beginning God created the heavens and the became bone, and viscera, and flesh. The earth. Now the earth was formless and deity of the wind blessed his lips, and he empty, darkness was over the surface of the came to take his first breath. Within this deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering strange vessel, I opened my eyes...‛ The over the waters‛ (Genesis 1:1-2, New second paragraph begins ‚On the second day, International Version). Besides the similarity the unseen hand from above cleaved you in

วารสารรามคา แหง ฉบับมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีท ี่ 37 ฉบับที่ 1 197 two, exacting penance for our joy as you birth trauma to Maganda/Eve/Woman: ‚On awakened from the deepest, most delicious the second day, my love, I was torn from the dreaming.‛ This anaphoric rhythm is used haven of your blood, the cradle of your flesh throughout the rest of the poem until the last and tendons. A smarting wound strewn across paragraph: ‚On the seventh day, my love, I our garden’s sweet grasses. I lay raw and surrendered.‛ aching. On this second day, my hands and As an alternative to the patriarchal feet learned how relentless the cold.‛ This is tone of Genesis, Maganda/Eve/Woman speaks a description of birth trauma. According to about her own creation. Man is the womb in Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God: which Woman took form. Man’s body is Primitive Mythology (1987), the abrupt fright safe, nourishing, and comforting. Man’s blood and pain experienced by the baby during is a ‚haven‛ and his flesh and tendons a birth, resulting in ‚caught breath, circulatory ‚cradle.‛ Thus, Woman’s love for Man is not congestion, dizziness, or even blackout,‛ only sexual, but also filial: ‚. . .within this, makes the birthing process and its attendant your darkness, I learned to weave song. Do imagery - darkness, claustrophobia, a passage - you remember me fluttering inside your ubiquitous archetypes of transformation in chest, tickled by the cool air newly filling mythology and religion (pp. 61-62). your lungs?‛ Besides being the womb that God, ignoring Woman, comforts only nourished Woman, in the third paragraph Man for this pain of separation: ‚On the Man is called Woman’s ‚mirror,‛ her fourth day, I sang a dirge, the river my reflection, the figure nestled in the other half harmony. From afar, you watched me, as of the split bamboo reed. However, the the unseen hand from above offered you opening of Adam’s chest to extract the rib reparations for your brokenness. ...On this causes injury to Malakas/Adam/Man and fourth day, the scars hardened over your heart.‛

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Woman receives no comfort, and Man learns the third day, I found river, and plunged the to live with the pain. ‚There were no words wisp of my body into its current…I learned for the sorrow bolting through me then, as to breathe without you…I mimicked the I watched your hands touch the scarring river’s lullaby…On the fourth day, I sang a place where I began.‛ Sorrow bolts through dirge, the river my harmony.‛ Reyes’s vision Woman, like lightning, reminding us of Zeus is to be commended for its boldness in whose weapon is the thunderbolt, and Thor portraying Woman as challenging God’s place the Norse god of thunder. in Man’s heart, and its realism in recognizing Woman disobeys God not by eating that union with Man not only would be fruit that gives knowledge of good and evil beautiful and safe but would contain its own but by attempting to claim Man and bring mystery and danger. Woman dares to imagine him back to the past, to have his love and the destruction of God’s garden in a fire that companionship in a time before the regime of results in ‚suns and thunder,‛ images of life this deity of the wind, this ‚unseen hand and fear, in order that she and Man may have from above‛: ‚More than anything, I thirsted a new start at a life together and may become to embrace you in our ocean, for its saltwater one being again: ‚A feast of we, luminous as to heal us both...I dreamed that from loss, we the secret of fruit and seed. A we impervious began again, a we that knew only of being to cleaving, to fracture.‛ This obviously, whole, of sharing heart, and breath, and salt.‛ in ‚feast‛ and ‚fruit and seed,‛ still contains The imagery is of the ocean, the primordial the image of the forbidden fruit. What water that is as old and sourceless as the is forbidden is not the knowledge of wind, and Woman allies herself with this good and evil but the union of the two force. It is water that shelters and comforts genders, Woman claiming ownership of Woman after her extraction from Man: ‚On God’s son.

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On the sixth day, I came to you, and told by the romantic tone of the eighth and ninth you of this dream. I touched your scars. sentences of the six paragraph. God, too You whispered a prayer. I gave you my powerful for mere Woman, takes back Man. secrets. You gave me your words. I asked Furthermore, God visits on Woman’s head for your breath. You gave me your seed. And as our bodies folded into each other, the ‚heaviest sorrow‛ or more rightly sorrows, we dreamed the same honeyed light. Upon which she, now without choice or hope, awakening, you named me for the morning. surrenders to - spiritual and psychological But on this sixth day, the unseen hand from separation from Man resulting in heartbreak, above wrested you from me, cleaved us in the pain of childbirth, and the indignities of a two once again, and weighted the heaviest body weaker than Man’s and a subordinate sorrow upon me. Never once did he show role in marriage. himself. In contrast to the loving, suppliant On the seventh day, my love, I surrendered. tone of ‚A Genesis of We, Cleaved,‛ the Man’s response to Woman is voice of Eve in ‚Eve Speaks‛ (Reyes, 2010, ambiguous, evasive, and selfish. She touches pp. 46-47) is proud, disdainful, and threatening. on his chest the scars of her extraction, an The poem begins by evoking an atmosphere attempt at deep psychological and physical of behavioral constraints, frustration, and union. In reply he addresses God. She shares emotional volatility. her secrets; he gives her ‚words,‛ the plural Let the man who cannot dream be a condemned man. Who comes here but form so that it is not mistaken for ‚promise‛ shadows of ourselves, where smoke seeps but instead possibly interpreted as prevarication. into plush velvet the color of lipstick and She asks for his breath, symbolic of sharing blood. This place is my dreamweaving, its his life; in response he satisfies his sexual iron sculptures, framed in light. Flickering desire for her. The ambiguity is heightened chandeliers’ fake fire. Still, wax melts and

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curls around my feet. The tables here are secretive and the other victimized and scratched brass, carved with names and cozened. All three possible settings merge to regrets. present a difficult marriage that, because of The setting could be a prison. The man the religious sacrament but also because of is condemned, sentenced to a term of Man and Woman’s emotional ties to each incarceration. The man and the speaker are other, cannot be simply or easily dissolved. merely shadows of themselves, grim attenuated The marriage is toxic. The wedding presences who left their more wholesome, rings are now mere ‚faux gold casing,‛ and hopeful aspects in the outside world. The conversation is deceitful: ‚Lover, do not sculptures of iron are prison bars. The tables come near, for I see story in your broken of ‚scratched brass, carved with names and parts. Lover, do not promise, for when you do, regrets‛ are mess hall tables. Alternatively I come to loathe words. Lover, do not speak, the setting could be a church. The ‚iron for what you say is vapor.‛ Furthermore, Eve sculptures, framed in light‛ are crucifixes. expresses fear at her spouse’s aggressiveness The wax comes from tiers of candles found and selfishness: ‚Your need opens something in alcoves in very traditional Catholic in me which knows to anticipate dread. I churches, candles that people light as they anticipate your reprimand, and I anticipate pray for dead loved ones. A third possibility your promise. Tell me then, as if I knew no is that the poem is set in a castle-like house words, tell me why you have created me to where a Gothic romance unfolds. The sofa of dread you,‛ and also ‚Let me always glance ‚plush velvet the color of lipstick and at empty doorways, knowing the movements blood,‛ the chandeliers of guttering light, and beyond these are you drawing near.‛ the iron sculptures conjure a narrative of a Eve however has her methods of marriage in which one spouse is sinister and defense and retaliation. Joseph Campbell

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(1987) remarks that ‚Before the separation of Hindu Kali…who is a personification of ‘all Eve, Adam was both male and female,‛ consuming Time…‛ (Campbell, 1987, p. 68). meaning that the first human being, before In ‚Eve Speaks 2‛ (Reyes, 2010, p. the creator ever thought to have two different 63). Eve is a shapeshifting nymph who longs biological sexes, was an androgyne (p. 104). for love. She lights a beacon to guide some Reyes demonstrates this idea when she oarsmen to her shore, one of whom is the portrays how Eve reviles her husband by man she desires, whom she calls pilgrim. declaring his actual androgyny: ‚Were I to ‚Come ashore, my winsome pilgrim, kiss the assign you color, you would be opaque, a earth if you must. See how this collection of fine slice of opal beneath the moon’s veil. stolen bones becomes a wolf. Place your Were I to touch you, you’d shatter, and open hand there, and the delicate skin of your crumble into jasmine-scented powder. I would wrist supine, so that she may know your gather you beneath my fingernails, dust my scent.‛ The poem is a declaration of love and love lines with you.‛ As an opal and as desire. Gone is the mocking, dangerous Eve fragrant talc, Adam devolves into items of from the first ‚Eve Speaks.‛ This Eve is very Eve’s jewelry and cosmetics. Eve further copes young and innocent, a girl confined to an by threatening to wield her own capacity for uninspiring hometown and ready for the violence. ‚. . . Lover, I will break you and adventure of a great love. compose a symphony with your bones. Of Aswang what remains, I shall grind into dust and mix An equally fascinating incarnation of with rain.‛ Eve is the cannibal ogress, a Diwata is the aswang, portrayed in the last mythological archetype encountered in all poem of the book. In the mythology of the folklores and elevated to ‚a universal symbol Bicol region and Panay island in southern in such cannibal-mother goddesses as the Philippines, Aswang was a god, the evil

Ramkhamhaeng University Journal Humanities Edition Vol. 37 No. 1 202 sibling or counterpart of the good god who wanted to quell uprisings against Spanish rule, was called Gugurang or Agurang (Clark & to eradicate native religious beliefs, and to del Rosario, 2011). Since Spanish colonial promote Christianity and European medicine times, the aswang came to embody varied among the locals. To accomplish these goals evil beings: a witch, a vampire, a werewolf, they labeled as aswang two groups of women: or a ghoul. Its most famous version is of the the fighters who attacked the Spanish at manananggal, usually a woman, who looks night, and the babaylans, the native priestess- normal during the day but then transforms at healers (Clark & del Rosario, 2011). The night into an evil creature that grows black images of the crone and caretaker of trees wings, detaches itself from the lower half of refer to the babaylan. In declaring herself its body, and then flies around to look for ‚the snake,‛ the aswang claims a role sleeping pregnant women because of its mythologically male. According to Campbell craving for fetuses (Ramos, 1990, p. 400; (1987) the serpent is ‚phallic, waterlike, Tan, 2008; Clark & del Rosario, 2011). lightning like, by which the maiden is to be I am the dark-hued bitch; see how wide my transformed‛ (p. 390). Philippine mythology maw, my bloodmoon eyes, features a serpent god of the clouds, called And by daylight, see the tangles and knots Ulilang Kaluluwa, ‚orphan spirit.‛ In the time of my riverine hair. before creation, Ulilang Kaluluwa fought with I am the bad daughter, the freedom fighter, the shaper of death masks. Bathala, the sky god, because each wanted I am the snake, I am the crone; I am caretaker the world for himself. Bathala won and of these ancient trees. burned Ulilang Kaluluwa’s body (Mangahas (from ‚Aswang,‛ Reyes, 2010, p. 73) & Llaguno, 2006). By claiming the serpent’s According to Bryan Argos of the Roxas identity, the aswang feminizes it and asserts City Museum, the Spanish friar-colonizers her own rivalry with the male Bathala. The

วารสารรามคา แหง ฉบับมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีท ี่ 37 ฉบับที่ 1 203 aswang is a rebel, the woman who dares to from various foreign cultures. A number of think independently and to decide her own poems in the collection feature historical destiny. Woman, but ‚Call It Talisman (If You Must)‛ Ending the book with only one poem (Reyes, 2010, pp. 51-54) encompasses the about the aswang leaves the reader with a sense successive pre-historical and historical periods of incompleteness. The collection might have in four pithy yet comprehensive sections and benefited from containing a few more poems will therefore suffice for a study of this that explore this dangerous persona of Diwata, embodiment of Diwata. The poem begins to balance the voice of the victim in poems with a woman warrior from a tattooed such as ‚Diwata‛ (pp. 14-21) and the voice headhunting tribe of pre-colonial times. The of longing in poems such as ‚Having Been blind old man tattoos her with illustrations of Cast, Eve Implores‛ (p. 67) in which Eve says, leaves, flowers, insects, a stream, all very I want to know the words to your prayer-- harmless, yet she views the stream as a my earliest memory, a thirst for your bones. ‚blade which women conceal beneath their Tell me what you know of redemption, skirts.‛ Later the Spanish priests would dear one, demonize such women warriors: ‚Women did and blossoms of hope unfurling their first indeed fight alongside the men once. Few petals. talk about it these days. The black-robed Tell me you awaken holding my name in holy men, who carried more curses than your hands. prayer, so feared armed women, they Historical Woman branded us savage and sinful, they called us Besides being mythological Woman, monsters. Women who tucked skirts between Diwata is also realistic, historical Woman who their legs, tongues of knives, hands like has experienced conquest by invading men tilling tools, we returned home to nurse our

Ramkhamhaeng University Journal Humanities Edition Vol. 37 No. 1 204 babies after washing clean our bloodied sex to the Japanese soldiers is historical fact hands.‛ If she holds her peace, she suffers (Asian Women’s Fund, n.d.; Steinbock, oppression, but if she fights, she suffers 2018). The poem though not only remembers vilification. In the second section this woman but foreshadows. The Guardian in February has lost her inheritance, her father’s land, 2018 reported on Philippine president to the Spanish hacienderos: ‚But by the time Rodrigo Duterte’s order to soldiers to shoot I grew old enough to marry, all his fields women communist rebels in the vagina. my father lost to the fire, and to the papers Duterte’s notoriety as a misogynist and a of the wealthy, not of this land but of mach o-fascist has since intensified (Ellis- gray cities far away from here.‛ Historical Petersen, 2018). It is noteworthy that these Filipina is therefore constrained, displaced, communist rebels, like the speaker of ‚Call It and impoverished. Talisman (If You Must),‛ are fighters and are The poem’s last two sections are set in threatened with the same dehumanizing act of the Second World War during the Japanese violence. Diwata was published six years occupation and describe the brutality of the before the start of the Duterte regime Japanese particularly against women: ‚But (Gutierrez, 2016), and so the prescience in these sun worshippers, they were cruel. They the above quotation disturbs deeply in its used the young women as whores, slid loaded proof that several decades may pass but pistols between their legs, gave them sores and misogyny remains and the oppression of fevers which none of our medicines could women continues. cure. The sun worshippers also took heads, but Verse Forms and Language left these to rot where they fell. No hunters The risk of prose poems is that the were these, but mercenaries, beasts.‛ The arrangement of the text in paragraphs as case of the ‚comfort women‛ forced to provide opposed to carefully separated lines could

วารสารรามคา แหง ฉบับมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีท ี่ 37 ฉบับที่ 1 205 lead to argument about whether the paragraphs hands to weave crescent moon into ocean are prose or poetry. The writer contends that current, serpent hiss into river’s rush. the text is poetry and has it published in a ‚Word‛ in that first sentence brings to mind book of poetry, but a reader might consider the Genesis story in which God speaks the text to be prose, perhaps rather imagistic creation into existence, and also the beginning and lilting, but prose nonetheless. Reyes’s of the Gospel of John, in which the Word is prose poems can only ever be considered identified as God. Hence this aubade is being poetry. Even when these poems contain sung possibly at the dawn of time, or possibly narrative, they are character-based; the speaker at the beginning of a renewed, more personal is candid, articulate, and well-defined as a relationship with God that Jesus Christ offers, personality. Furthermore, Reyes employs Christ who is called the Second Adam. abstract words, imagery, and figurative ‚Witness‛ in the third sentence includes language not merely to state and describe but testimony in addition to experience, the to create a sense of being, to create precise connotation of vows, without the tense evocations and presences. Here is a stanza watchfulness of a vigil. ‚Stillness‛ in the same from ‚Eve’s Aubade‛ (Reyes, 2010, p. 66). sentence is also very carefully chosen. What Remain by my side as wind deity, as word, is intended is not ‚silence‛ nor ‚peace,‛ as eyes bright with both dusk and amber. not something aural nor psychological but Remain with me so that we may keep vigil, something tactile, of the body, and ‚immobility‛ both of us before morning’s honeyed light is tactile but has sinister undertones of filters through fire escapes. In our vigil, let paralysis. Thus, ‚stillness‛ is the perfect choice. there be only witness, and I will offer you stillness rising into unfettered dawn. Here I Regarding imagery, the fire escapes make will weave a dreaming of lovemaking known the urban setting, with its attendant bodies’ fire and salt. Here, I will teach your hectic days, noise, and crimes, so that the gift

Ramkhamhaeng University Journal Humanities Edition Vol. 37 No. 1 206 of stillness becomes the exact required balm. musical verse forms. She chooses the pantoum The weaving hands, and the association of for ‚Sea Incantation‛ (Reyes, 2010, pp. 44- moon with ocean and serpent with river, 45) and ‚The Villagers Sing of the Woman situate the poem in mythology even while it Who Becomes a Wave Who Becomes the unfolds in a city tenement. As for figurative Water Who Becomes the Wind‛ (pp. 61-62). language, the hendiadys ‚dusk and amber‛ As with the word ‚duyong‛ discussed earlier, not only reveals the color of the wind deity’s by using the pantoum Reyes places Diwata eyes but shows Eve’s proactiveness in claiming within the larger scope of Malay mythology her lover; the poem is an aubade, a song to and acknowledges the Philippines’ Malay the dawn, but Eve, or eve, has put her light in heritage. The pantoum is a Malaysian poetic his eyes, the light of dusk, thereby taking him form, a sequence of quatrains linked by from the morning. The synesthesias ‚honeyed repetition. The second and fourth lines of light,‛ combining taste and sight, and each stanza become the first and third lines ‚unfettered dawn,‛ combining touch and of the following stanza (Strand & Boland, sight, ensure that setting is presented through 2001, pp. 43-44). The result in Reyes’s poems the speaker’s emotional lenses, her sweet is a beautiful, indeed incantatory, succession feelings of joy and freedom. The metonymies of imagery and sound, favoring character and of ‚fire and salt‛ for bodies, ‚current‛ for setting over narrative. Here are two stanzas ocean, ‚hiss‛ for serpent, and ‚rush‛ for river from ‚The Villagers Sing of the Woman Who emphasize that it is physical details that Becomes a Wave Who Becomes the Water bestow depth, fullness, and poignancy to the Who Becomes the Wind‛: experience of togetherness. she weaves words into the fabric of sky For the poems in Diwata arranged in she knows the stars, an ascension of pearls traditional poetic lines, Reyes uses particularly she is witness, keeper of starlight

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she weeps silver tears when the moon is full (Reyes, 2010, p. 59), which is arranged as a she knows the stars, an ascension of pearls paragraph but evokes the rhythm and she is mother, the deepest ocean repetitions of the Catholic rosary. Just as the she weeps silver tears when the moon is full rosary is a series of repetitions of the Lord’s leaf storm, rice terrace, color of midnight Prayer and the Hail Mary (United States Also incantatory is ‚A Chorus of Conference of Catholic Bishops, n.d.), ‚She Villagers Sing a Song from Another Time Laments Unnumbered Losses‛ chants Now Only a Memory‛ (Reyes, 2010, p. 60), What things I have cast into the sea I have structured as a call and response: done this in order to forget my child if not Come back, return! It is not yet the time to for this you would curse your fathers their wander, names their fists smother my every cry I Come back, return! It is not yet the time to have done this in order to forget my child wander. the villagers tell me this is for the best their When it is your hour, then you will be called, names their fists smother my every cry our When it is your hour, then you will be called, medicine woman’s hands and tongue Come back to the village, return to the severed the villagers tell me this is for the mountain— best both age and fire have blinded her our Her trees invite you to climb into their arms! medicine woman’s hands and tongue severed The effect is of group prayer, an invocation The paragraph form allows for a breathless to the diwata, and the spaces between the sequence of images. This works smoothly couplets are like spaces of air through which with the repetitions to elevate the poem above the voices travel, allowing time for each mere storytelling into the portrayal of a request to be heard. traumatized speaker whose mind continuously One of the most interesting poems in flashes details of her sufferings and whose Diwata is ‚She Laments Unnumbered Losses‛ heart turns to the kind of prayer she was

Ramkhamhaeng University Journal Humanities Edition Vol. 37 No. 1 208 taught by the very people who oppressed her of sky‛ present Diwata as a divine memory and her culture. keeper, immortal, watchful of the movement A final aspect of Reyes’s poetry to of peoples and cultures through the millennia, remark on is her juxtaposition of three and capable of absorbing all. ‚With ink and languages – English, Tagalog, and Spanish – thread she draws her own hands, ‚pero in certain poems. Here is an extract from siempre estas manos desaparecen,‛ but always ‚Diwata‛ (p. 14). these hands disappear, as the Spanish colonizers A woman’s hands make fine threads dance. attempt to erase as much of the native beliefs With needles of carabao horn, of bamboo, as they could replace with the male Christian she embroiders names into silk—serpent god and Christian teachings and motifs. Still ulap scale luna fire lihim gem azul eye she keeps on weaving ‚enkanto contra palabras liwanag river mariposa light talà—when vaporosas, poemas contra vacía alma,‛ spells she weaves these words into the fabric of sky, a charm against forgetting. With ink against empty words, and poems against an and thread she draws her own hands pero empty soul. Worth noticing is the Tagalog siempre estas manos desaparecen; she spelling, in a Spanish phrase, for the Spanish weaves enkanto contra palabras vaporosas, word encanto. poemas contra vacía alma. In Diwata, Reyes’s featuring of Woman The fascinating accumulation of nouns – across mythologies – Philippine, Malay, Pacific, ‚serpent ulap (cloud, Tagalog) scale luna Greek, and Judeo-Christian – is a fruitful (moon, Spanish) fire lihim (secret, Tagalog) topic of study for comparative mythologists, gem azul (blue, Spanish) eye liwanag as is her portrayal of historical Woman. (brightness, Tagalog) river mariposa (butterfly, Students of poetry can learn much from her Spanish) light talà (star, Tagalog)‛ – woven collection about the possibilities of the prose by the mythological weaver into ‚the fabric poem and the qualities of the incantatory tone.

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In all mythologies, as in real life, Woman to pray, to connect with a god who is often struggles to maintain a relationship with too male and too negligent of her. Her tools Man, Man whom the outer world constantly are her emotions both sweet and spiteful, her pulls away from her and whose impulses too capacity for love and forgiveness, and the often are towards control. She struggles to be imagery that structures and fills her every herself, to be allowed expression of her day: water, light, thread, the body, children, natural liveliness and strength. She struggles and the voice of the primeval chant.

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