How Our Towns Drown

How in the downpour our towns drown, downstream of doom to sea we are returned, houses and pigs in ceaseless procession as skies boom and fall thundering spears to beat down all curses and tears to tide – among seaweed and driftwood and water hyacinths, prayer wreaths for the dead and the drowned,

downstream of doom to sea we are returned. Tottering over manholes, shivering in the blast of a blind monsoon, its hollow howl the rolling dreariness of our emptied hills, our feet doubt their ground where streets vanish in the gorge and swill of slime – to flood at last we are flotsam and scum,

houses and pigs in ceaseless procession. And rushing past our brethren, those lovelorn cats and cockroaches, amind floating roofs, lumbering cadavers of cherished scrap, our naked brats scamper and gambol over their scavenged loot of murky things, tires and handbags and bottles and shoes,

as skies boom and fall thundering spears on Cherry Hill slumping down its slope and shoveling homes in one boulder swoop – landfill of families in moaning mud! so sudden, their screams no echoes bear, abducted to questioning rage of mind by what “state of calamity” or “act of God”

to beat down all curses and tears to tide. Antipolo to Pangasinan the earth rivers and shoves down Pinatubo’s renegade ooze to our paddies swelling to ocean of muck and fishponds collapsing to swamp; for bridges are down, and mountains too far, to flee and shelter from the water’s gore

among seaweed and driftwood and water hyacinths, what word, what route? what water world for breathing space, the floors of our dreams but shiver their fittings and leak their gloom. Clutch of seaweed for hair, drifwood for limbs, hyacinths for a cloak, what new indigene, only survivor to offer

prayer-wreaths for the dead and the drowned? Requiescant in pace … vitam aeternam, so cradle the infant swaddled in rubble grime, just now excavated and no mother to hush its lost wail, no father, no sibling – surely now their wreck is deaf to cranes or fingers digging, to what end any change

how in the downpour our towns drown.             -- Gemino H. Abad. In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics 1973-2003                 University of the Philippines Press. Quezon City. Philippines. 2004

(This poem was written by the abovenamed famous Filipino poet after a past typhoon wreaked devastation in the Philippines in the late 1990s.  It may very well described the tragedy in Romblon after the recent Typhoon Frank. The accompanying pictures are courtesy of volunteer Peter Barnett of New Zealand who was in Romblon at the height of the typhoon, along with volunteers Denise Dunn and Andrew Hudson and recorded the devastation immediately after.)           

More pictures from the Long Beach, Sugod, the Marine Sanctuary and Carmen can be found here.