A Letter From A Friend Poem by RIC BASTASA

kombanwa!

Tommorow is my day off.
It's not a busy time now at the office.
So I take one day off a week.
Our busy times are in May, August, and year end.

You know, we used to be superbusy a couple of years ago.
My boss is a workaholic.
He has no other life but his company.
My officemates frequently worked overtime.
I could get away from it because of my children.
Then, maybe, because of overwork, he almost dropped dead!
Since then, medyo nagaan ang among load.


I hope she is feeling better now.
Medicine/Science has progressed a lot these days,
and age is really no longer a big obstacle now to childbearing.
I have a cousin in Australia.
Late pod sila nakaanak.
The problem was with the husband.
Blocked ang tube for sperm cells.
He had laser surgery, after which, nagkababy sila.

So, don't give up hope (nozomi) .


I've been reading your poems.
Whether you call them your lies, empathies, whatever, they all boil down to life's truths.
Life is poetry for you, that's why,
you'll never run out of ideas to write about as long as you live.
I don't understand all of them though - maybe due to lack of empathy on my part or my brain is simply dulled!

You also write beautiful visayan poems!
They made me miss my father - he can be very poetic.
He used to criticize me and my mother that we couldn't speak good Cebuano.
My mother was Chavacana, and
I actually spoke that language first before Cebuano.

You lately write about war,
young men dying in conflicts these days.
Is peace and order getting worse there?
Are there more of summary killings these days?

You wrote about Silliman/ Dumaguete.
A beautiful place. I studied there one year and I loved it there.
You know, I had a bit of colonial mentality,
and to me at that time it felt like
I had a taste of a bit of American life -
rodeos,
square dancing..
.I enjoyed watching stage plays and
cultural shows there.
So I had a school culture shock when
I transferred to UP Los Banos.
There were lots of school demos
and there wasn't much art in their stage plays.
They were more concerned about getting the message across:

'Down with Marcos! ',
'Down with imperialism! '

Goodness, I didn't even truly understand 'imperialism' then.
After some time, I learned to appreciate
the liberal atmosphere there.

I liked 'The songs of the geisha'.
Made me think of the Japayukis here,
rather than the Japanese geisha.

After seeing the cherry blossoms here,
I don't think I can ever associate it
with autumn anymore,
even in the poetic sense

('Cherry blossoms fading and falling') .

It blooms in spring and
the peak of its beauty is only
a couple of days or so.
The petals don't fade
and fall.
They fall while still at the peak of their beauty.
They look beautiful even when they've fallen on the ground,
looking like snow from a distance.
They symbolize glorious death at the peak
of their beauty
youth.
That's why the sakura also
symbolizes the kamikaze pilots -
most of them were so young!


I backed track to some of your old poems
and I found that of Kazu!
Thank you, that was nice!
I'll show it to him.

Can't say much about my love being stronger than his. I
'm very far from being an ideal wife.
And no, his origins are not samurai.
He traced it some lowly Korean blacksmiths.
Centuries ago, Korea was more advanced
than Japan, and
Japan invited Korean craftsmen
to learn from them.
Funny thing is that his father is a fierce nationalist
(he was trained to be a kamikaze pilot) ,
and he looks down on Koreans!
He won't even try and eat any Korean food!


So long for now. Please give my regards to her.
Again, I'm not expecting your response.
I'll just be reading your poems.