Poems (in conversation)

Poems from two poetry collections I read in the last two days: Marginal Annotations and Other Poems (Giraffe Books, 2001) by Edith L. Tiempo and To the Evening Star (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013) by Simeon Dumdum Jr.


From Spelling It Out
Edith L. Tiempo

How like a spell the dusk falls
On the jaded eyes.
It's not day or dark, in that deviant time
When the ways of rhyme
And the ways of reason
Do not play the sorcerer's part;
Just disarray, the random, distortions,
The turns and twists, surprise, surmise,
When the wavery decibel calls
The world to intimations,
In this twilight of the heart
Where a freakish glimmer reinvents,
And we startle
Into a place of perpetual
Sheer astonishments.


Thank You
Simeon Dumdum Jr.

To think that I owe you my deepest thanks,
And I have done nothing except sit here,
As though expecting someone to appear
Suddenly on the path between the banks
Of flowers, but the glare of noontime blanks
The eyes, and happily the inner ear
Catches your voice ever present and clear,
Calls on the mind and the heart to close ranks,
And begs the mouth to mutter something true,
And hands to reach for the path and to pick
A rose or two before someone arrives,
And then who knows if that someone is you
Because you're in my mind, and I am quick
To celebrate the linkage of our lives.