Selected Poems of Love, Liberation and Beauty (1)
George Patterson, US
George Bradford Patterson II is an American expatriate, living in Laur, Nueva Ecija Province, Central Luzon, rural Philippines. He has a Masters Degree in Language Education with a Concentration in Teaching English as a Second Language Education (ESL). Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA May, 1982. He also has a BA in Religion, January, 1974 from Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, including a concentration in Spanish courses. He taught ESL composition, reading skills, grammar, and syntax to non-native speakers in the Writing Program, called also the English Language Enrichment Center, Temple University , Fall Semester, 1982 Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He also was a substitute teacher, teaching ESL and Spanish and English as a bilingual teacher in the Philadelphia public school system from September, 1984 to December, 1984. He also taught EFL/ESL in Korea, China, Honduras, Colombia, and Peru from 1982 to 1993 in universities, colleges, binational centers, and language institutes.
E-mail: borgesmagic@hotmail.com
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My literaturę for peace
Exploration
***
The miracle of stars
Neruda’s two mermaids
The twighlight
The death of a bobcat
Haikus of seasons
Taj Mahal
Chitmaram
after Francisco Gomes de Matos
(dedicated to Tran Van Dinh and his lovely wife, Mrs Tran Nuong)
What is my literature for peace?
Feelings, forms, functions, and rhythms;
Ideas, genres, texts, diction, and styles;
Persons, personas, personifications, plots, imagery, and symbols In
aesthetic, creative and challenging contexts.
Meanings, metrics, moods, metaphors, similes, and alliterations; Prose,
poetry, psalms, proverbs, and themes;
Writers, poets, critics, and editors;
Imaginatively what can they achieve?
Their attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and sentiments
Can be focused on facts, fiction, realism, or surrealism;
Voiced through epics, epiphanies, essays, short stories, novels, and
travelogues In simple or hybrid types of discourse.
In verses, visions, voices, stanzas, and dreams,
New ways to be learned
In songs, sonnets, sijos, haikus, odes, limericks, and ballads;
Irenic touches needed.
Let’s declare a noble universal right
Manifested by creative imagination:
One of sharing Literature, so sublimely caring,
Mirrored in the New Kingdom.
after Wisława Szymborska
(dedicated to Suzanne Kalbach, Janet Melvin, Noor Faridah Abdul Manaf, Mrs. Tran Nuong, and Judith Brister)
I have hope in the great exploration.
I have hope in the woman who will make the exploration.
I have hope in the wish of the woman who will make the exploration.
I have hope in her despite her face turning snow white,
her palpitations, her trembling hands, her hair drenched in sweat.
I have hope in the preserving of her artefacts,
preserving them in their wholeness,
preserving them to the last bit.
I have hope in the woman’s patience,
in the accuracy of her deliberation,
in her rationality.
I have hope in the preserving of plates,
the harnessing of winds,
the navigating in water,
the transforming of rays.
I am certain that this will consummate,
that it will not be in vain,
that it will bear fruit with witnesses.
I am certain that there are those who will discover what happened,
including the husband, the lover, the journalist, the monkey, the sloth,
and the quetzal who sings her melodies.
I have hope in the acceptance to contribute.
I have hope in the fulfilled career.
I have hope in the diligent years of work.
I have hope in the secret shared with the Almighty.
These words transcend for me all theorems and axioms without looking
for assistance from all formulas..
My faith fuses with the Ultimate Light.
Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, October 9, 2005
(dedicated to SandraTrafilaf)
[translation]
The angels are hidden in your eyes
that I look at, your starry eyes radiate rays of hope.
Your soul puts on wings
of candle lights from the prison
I take you by the hand, you take me
to the twilight.
We fly to the stars,
absorbing the rays of hope.
There is a queen on the throne
of the celestial kingdom.
I will go to find the miracle
of the stars behind the distant rainbow.
Afterwards, I will give you the thanks for your light.
after Wisława Szymborska
(dedicated to to Rodolfo Reyes and Noor FardahAbdul Manaf)
This is what I view in my visions about the Promised Land :
two statues of mermaids, standing behind the lounge chairs and sofa,
lean towards me,
the clouds behind them weep,
the sea is dancing the dance of love,
and singing the song of the sea.
The test is the future of humankind.
I pause and contemplate.
One mermaid listens with loving care,
the other appears to be pining away but
when it’s apparent I’m not sure what to say, she prods me with a gentle
caressing of her hand.
(dedicated to Gabriela Mistral)
[translation]
Beautiful twilight, crackling and palpitating, I see the rose garden by the
distant rainbow: the fiery roses of my heart,
soaring to the rosy celestial kingdom.
I see
the radiant rays of the tigress
they are so real: they caress me.
I see
her hair,
and it grows in the night
like the sparkle of a diamond.
I see
her eyes
and they shine like white candle lights
of stars of hope.
I see her face
and it flashes like a ruby rose.
I see
her rosy lips
and they blaze like the Earth of Fire.
And afterwards I see her whiteness
in the happy heavens of white doves,
whining and blushing,
on a cold night of a silvery moon,
full of snow flakes.
(dedicated to Dorothy Bradford Patterson and Reverend Christie Patterson)
We saw him after breakfast, lying alone under the cabin, breathing heavily
and slowly with deep sighs, crying constantly like weeping winds, which
were barely heard whispers like rustling pine needles and murmuring leaves
of evergreens, maples, birches, beeches, firs, ashes, and spruces, glittering
everywhere and with increasing intensity. These were his cries into the
everlasting rest like the sleep of the evergreens. The quills were sticking
deeper and deeper into his flesh like little daggers all over his body at
different angles. His body contracted from pulsating rhythms of breathing
with wailing from paroxysms of throbbing pain. His tufts stood up like
reeds; his whiskers cold like a briar patch. His face twisted with the
distortions of a rocky mountain, and the rosy colour of his cheeks faded
into pallor of a misty maple. His skin turned into the greyish and whitish
paleness. He sighed much more often as he became deathly white. We
stood transfixed in horror in front of him as his body writhed faintly with
contortions and as the quills penetrated into his flesh, causing his
movements to diminish. His body quivered like a leaf in the whispering
wind in his slow dance to death — the inevitable dance to eternal sleep
like a sleeping king, a shimmering fir in his snow white overcoat.
Last Snow
White weeping whispers
fall softly on fatigued face
on Candlelight Road.
Daffodil
A visionary
views yellow ballerinas
smiling in the field.
Autumn Morning
A squirrel scampers
up sleeping pine cheerfully
amid morning dew.
Autumn Afternoon
A rabbit dashes
away from me like a sprite
from leafy abode.
Cherry Blossoms
Pink petals descend
around me as beds of love
glowing peacefully.
(dedicated to Bibhuti Yadav, Professor and Mrs. Tran Van Dinh, and Faridah Manaf)
The sun blazes over me and the golden rays diffuse into a panoply of
streams suffusing rows of hedges—neatly trimmed and smiling at me —
glittering, glittering, glittering flashes of emeralds. Mango and papaya
trees loom on both sides as the softness of the grass offsets the glaring
sunlight and heat. I stand for one moment amid the saturation of
light and amble like an indigo angel to this monument of love. I walk
through the entrance and feel its stillness, so sublime. There is a serenity,
an immense silence resonating from the white marble walls; and these
walls vibrate with love pervading the entire chamber and
imbuing me with their whiteness—an eternity of incandescence, flashes
of little white candle lights, infusing me with quietude. The angels of
peace and love hover me, flying back and forth around me like white
doves in infinite concentric circles of hues of auras, so dazzling.
They whisper into my ears weeping purple melodies of love, and
they caress me with their snow white wings. They shine at me with an
infinity of whiteness as their rhythms—White Jasmines! White Jasmines!
White Jasmines! — spiral around me into infinity. Thick lights ripple
through the room and beat upon us pillars of wisdom; and the winds
sweep by me, blowing like a Himalayan breeze—dancing back and forth
and around me like white ballerinas.
(dedicated to the people of Bangladesh)
I didn’t expect a one-eyed boatman to row me
across Ear Flower River with jasmines and gandarajes on both banks o
the river from the germinations
of a flower, placed by a prince in the ear of a princess.
I didn’t expect this river) to be silent,
nor did I expect thus river to be quiet
except from the sounds of the water
from the slow moving oars
with their sweeping strokes
with glistening green water,
surging and reverberating behind me..
They almost seduced me to sleep
with their caressing waves.
I didn’t expect to see Achae Prue,
sitting on a teak chair
while his smiling wife stored grain.
He wore a red and blue-checkered lungi,
and he had short black hair and bright brown eyes,
twinkling at me like a star prince,
and his son smiled at me like a white jasmine.
His eyes beamed at me like the hill tracts.
I didn’t expect to be stung by a huge black ant
on my right hand,
I winced and cried to the mango trees
and they smiled at me.
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