Tanaga: Song Where Every Filipinx Person Is Standing by the Ocean
my filipino father’s
art was to christen each child
with a mother’s memory
held close over centuries
while he held at ocean’s length
his birthplace, his riverbank
and the language I don’t speak—
yet I’m at home in his name
always at home in the world
when the trees sing, hello leaves!
when the earth sings, good-bye leaves!
when inside me I feel words
I cannot sing speak to me
what were the names of the trees
my father said good-bye to?
when my father died I sang
a lullaby: good-bye words!
hello songs I cannot sing!
good-bye words inside a score
the ocean keeps on singing
and I said to her, mothers?
and I said to her, fathers?
and she said to me, they hear
and they said to me, we hear
Notes:
Title after Danez Smith.
Tanaga is an Indigenous Filipino poetry form. This poem appeared in our July/August 2021 issue with three other tanagas by Aileen Cassinetto, Sofia M. Starnes, and Luisa A. Igloria.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2021)