Epistolaryo ng Bagamundo at ang Tugon ng Multo by Mikael de Lara Co (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2026)
Reading Epistolaryo ng Bagamundo at ang Tugon ng Multo, the third poetry book of Mikael de Lara Co, was not a straightforward read. I found myself taking long pauses after every poem, trying to catch my breath. Unable to move on to the next poem, I needed to process the words in front of me and latch on to the ideas and feelings they generated. What I thought was a leisurely read took me days as the images lingered in my mind. Something was eating the poet, and his frustrations and pains bleed into the reader's anxiety. It could be a bruising experience.
An overwhelming guilt haunted the poet. How could he bear witness to a war in Gaza and carry the weight of history unfolding beyond his reach and firsthand experience? We all saw the images and heard about the atrocities in the comfort of our cubicles but how could a Filipino poet engage with them?
In "Probokasyon sa Probokasyon sa Probokasyon" (Provocation Upon Provocation Upon Provocation), the poet asked, "Kaya mo bang magsulat / ukol sa pagdurusa sa malalayong bayan?" (Can you write / about suffering in far-off places?). His answer to the provocative question was a pedantic pile of the same words, unable to arrive at a justification that would convince even himself. All translations are mine:
Kung gayon: Magsulat ukol sa pagdurusa
sa malalayong bayan. Matapos nito,
itanong sa sarili kung paano mong kinakayang
magsulat ukol sa pagdurusa sa malalayong bayan.
Samakatuwid, isulat ang totoo,
na kayâ ka nagsusulat ukol sa pagdurusa
sa malalayong bayan
ay dahil wala ka pang sapat na tapang
upang harapin ang sarili mong mga multo.
If that's the case: Write about the suffering
in far-off places. After which,
ask yourself how you can bear
writing about suffering in far-off places.
And so: write this truth,
that the reason you're writing about suffering
in far-off places
was because you were not brave enough
to face your own ghosts.
The distance separating the poet from faraway wars was geographic: an ongoing historical event so far beyond his grasp and yet so near in emotional reckoning. Mikael Co's ethical conundrum was how the circumstances of a distant war could become material for a poem by a poet from the other side of the world.
It could be that the poet was in denial of his own suffering, unable to "face [his] own ghosts." Wars preoccupy him because the capacity for human cruelty is the same elsewhere.
Walter Benjamin's idea of history as an inevitable chain of terrifying historical events was acknowledged by the poet: "At kailan mo natuklas / na pinagdurugtong tayo // ng sari-sariling digmaan. / At kailan mo natukoy na ang pagdilat // ay pagdurusa." (And when did you discover / that we are connected by // our own homegrown wars. / And when did you realize that to live // is to suffer.)
For poets attuned to human suffering, wars exact a toll on the mind. "Ang Aklatan sa Shuja'iyya" (The Library in Shuja'iyya) was dedicated to the memory of Refaat Alareer (1979–2023), a Gaza-born Palestinian poet.
Paa ng sirang mesa, unan sa ilalim ng butas
na ulo ng sanggol, mga piraso ng kasaysayan
mula sa malalayong bayan: Inunang paslangin
ng Khmer Rouge ang mga nakasalamin. Mayroong
tula dito. Kung may bahagi ng pusong
natatapyas sa bawat masaksihang kamatayan,
ilang airstrike bago ito tuluyang maubos?
May bubughaw pa bang sugat sa kalangitang
humalili sa pader?
Balang araw
mangangahas muli tayong magpalipad
ng saranggola.
Maaaring
wala na ako doon. Mayroong tula dito.
A leg of a broken table, a pillow under the punctured
head of an infant, fragments of history
from far-off places: The Khmer Rouge liquidated
first the ones wearing eyeglasses. A poem
dwells here. If a section of the heart
is chipped away for every death witnessed,
how many airstrikes before it disappears?
Is there any shade of blue darker than a heaven which
replaced the walls?
One day
we will be brave enough to fly
kites.
I may
no longer be around then. A poem dwells here.
From Cambodia to Gaza, cruelty and hate persisted, and poetry dared to document what was left: broken tables, pillows, eyeglasses. Poetry was recorded on scraps of paper, material fragments of history that nonetheless contained the undying dream to "fly / kites."
The poet immediately refuted this romantic idea of poetry as resistance in the opening of the next poem, "Sin Verguenza," where a feeling of indescribable shame chips away at the poet's conscience.
“Balang araw, matatapos ang digmaan
at mababalikan ko na sa wakas
ang aking mga tula,” sabi ng graffiti
sa Aleppo, at wala kang magawa
kundi mamutiktik sa hiya
ngayong kakasangkapanin mo na naman
ang pagdurusa ng iba para makasulat
ng sariling tula.
"One day, the war will end
and I can finally return to writing
my poems," said the graffiti
in Aleppo, and you couldn't help
but die in shame
now that you were using again
the suffering of others in order to write
your own poem.
The poet then prayed a litany to the various gods: the god of worms, of windows, of the throats, of sidewalks, of cable wires, of metaphors.
Diyos ng mga kawad, paano pa bang lilikha
ng kapilya mula sa guho. Diyos
ng talinghaga. Balang araw
matatapos ang digmaan at babalikan
natin ang mga tula ng mga may tapang
ng hiyang tumula sa panahong ganito.
God of cables, how could we create
a chapel from the ruins. God
of metaphor. One day
the war will end and we will return
to the poems of those who were shamelessly
brave enough to write a poem in these times.
The invocation was preserved from the poet's first two English poetry books: What Passes for Answers (2013) and Canopy (2017), but here the polished lyricism of the first two books gives way to the rawness and messiness of the Filipino register. What saved the poet from his ethical dilemma was his "self-consciousness" when he couldn't help / but die in shame as he appropriated a suffering poet's graffiti at the outset. And the jumble of gods served to undermine the "poetic" and bring a clear un-poetic poetry to the foreground. "Sabi ng diyos ng mga bintana, / Titigan mo ako, baka sakaling / may makapkap ka pang kapayapaang / nakasilid sa mga hiwa ng mundo. / Walang silbi ang makatang naglilihis / ng paningin." (Said the god of windows, / Look me in the eye, you might / frisk out some peace / hiding in the interstices of the world. / The poet who averts his gaze / is inutile.)
Stitching the threads of these poems were a select set of recurring images and statements. A few examples were: the knife concealed under the sink, a glass of water by the bedside to drink after the poet's bouts of nightmares, fitting things between two measly palms ("dadalawang palad"), and a body that can no longer bear it (original in italics, "Hindi ko na káya sa katawang ito."). Their recurrence gave the poems a unified effect and seemed to function as a vocabulary of journey and pain shared between the poet and the reader.
Mikael Co used various lineations, indentations, and poetic formats, mixing English and Filipino passages to create hybrid forms of expression, as in "Laging nasa Bingit" (Always on the Brink), a prose poem alternating Filipino and English sentences. This poem contains the line, "Sabi nga: Tungkulin ng makatang di maubusan ng salita." (It is said: The poet's task is to never run out of words.) The line alluded to "The Doomed," a poem appearing in Mikael Co's first two books: "The task of poetry / is to never run out of words."
"Meditasyon sa Parang" (Meditation on Wilderness) began with a compression of Rilke's lines: "Ayon kay Rilke: Nakakikilabot / ang mga anghel, / sapagkat ano nga ba ang kariktan / kundi bukal ng kilabot?" (According to Rilke: Every angel / is terrifying, / because beauty is nothing / but the root of terror?) Stephen Mitchell translates Rilke's passage as "For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror ... / ... / ... Every angel is terrifying." William H. Gass goes for "because [beauty] is nothing but terror's herald; / ... / ... Every Angel is awesome." The Rilke device, as well as the meditation on poetry and Gaza, reminded me of Sa Wala Ka Maniwala (Trust in Nothing), the final volume of Sonetoismo by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles.
Perhaps our brave and shameless poet was justified in never running out of words. Who else would memorialize the bloodied temples and wasted lives? In "Tanging Pananalig" (Only Faith), the poet questioned the Great Poet ("Dakilang Makata") for not intervening with His omnipotence: "may kutob akong / hindi rin Siya nagbabasa ng tula." (I suspect / that even He doesn't read poems.) Thus the poet carried his faith in art while resisting in the only way he knew: "ang tangi kong alam na pag-aaklas / ay ang laban sa pananahimik?" (the only form of resistance I know / is the one against silence?). Never running out of words is a resistance against silence.
If silence reigns in wars in far-off places, destruction prevails without resistance. To remain silent in the face of war is to embrace death, even suicide. But like the insistent words of a poet (in graffiti, in paper scraps), love itself was an ardent form of resistance, as in "Ang mga Mangingibig ng Khan Younis" (The Lovers of Khan Younis):
May pulutong ng kalapating nakikipagkarera
sa mga bala. Mahihipo ba ang pakpak
kahit man lamang sa haraya, mahahanap
ang batobalaning nakabaon sa bituka't
gumagabay sa kanila tungo sa kung-saang umaga?
Narito pa rin tayo kahit ubos na ang landas palabas
ng lungsod. May kargang babala ang mga ulap.
Natatakot ako. Kung darating ang apoy, Sinta,
hawakan mo ako. Paghinangin nawa ng digmaan
ang ating mga palad. Pagbuhulin sana ng init
ang ating mga gulugod. At kung balang araw
mahukay tayo ng mananakop, maisip
nila nawa: Sa kabila ng lahat, may nagmahalan
pa rin dito. Hindi nila napigil ang pag-ibig.
A troop of doves races against
the rain of bullets. Can their wings even be touched
by imagination, can the magnetic attraction
buried in their intestines and
guiding them toward what morning be found?
We're still here even if all roads out of the city
are blocked. The clouds carry a warning.
I'm scared. If fire comes, my Love,
please hold me. Let our palms be soldered by
the war. Let the heat knot together
our vertebrae. And one day
when the conquerors unearth our remains, let
them think: Despite everything, two lovers
remained here. They could not contain their love.
The poetic sequence ended with gestures of closure. Some traumatic family event or tragedy (a fire?) was confronted, an heirloom or inheritance might be destroyed, but the poet was sure it would all end with him ("nagpasya na ako. / Sa akin magtatapos ito."). Still, his birthright was secured, he had perhaps forgiven the ghost haunting him.
Like César Vallejo, his death poem was already composed. And an invitation to another poet (the poem has an epigraph from Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha) was extended:
ang aking paanyaya: Kung maligaw ka
sa munti naming arkipelago, dalawin mo ako.
Pirming walang kandado ang pintuan
ng tahanan ko. Palaging may tao dito.
my invitation: If you happen to find yourself
in our humble archipelago, come visit me.
The doors to my home are
unlocked. And people are always waiting here.
In an ideal world, Mikael Co, an accomplished translator apart from being a brilliant poet, would produce equally forceful translations of these haunting, bruising poems. (Readers will have to make do with my versions and interpretations above.) Meanwhile, those who read them in Filipino will encounter some of the most fragile and raw lines about being a feeling human being despite wars and corruption. And, after drawing sharp breaths and audible sighs, they will also be treated to gestures of kindness and hospitality. This book is like a hard-earned respite. It is one poet trying to connect with another, one human being to another.
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