Eman as koan

Next Monday marks the 26th death anniversary of Emmanuel A. F. Lacaba, poet extraordinaire, martyr to a cause.

The Office of Research and Publications (ORP) of the Ateneo de Manila University has reissued Eman’s Salvaged Poems, edited by his brother Jose F. Lacaba. Published by Salinlahi Pubishing House as a posthumous collection in 1986, the title has been out of print for some time.

This reissue should help a younger generation of poets and literature lovers to acquaint themselves with the remarkable poetry that Eman wrote, oh so precociously and prodigiously, before his death at the hands of the Philippine military when he was only 27.

His poetry is of course familiar to those who grew up with him in the days of psychedelia and the nights of rage, the successive cycles of engagement the young Lacaba went through in the early ’70s, before he fulfilled the Pinoy outsider’s destiny as a montañosa – a full-fledged rebel in the rugged countryside.

An earlier fascination with montagne concerns involved cult worship on mystical Mt. Banahaw. But Eman evolved all too quickly through various guises – as young scholar, brilliant poet, bohemian magus at an Ermita cafe, indie film maker, university lecturer, labor activist, and finally, as an NPA regular assigned to Mindanao, where he met his fate in 1976.

Having been his friend in the late ’60s (we were of the Silliman workshop batch of ’68) and through the turn into the ’70s, I’m especially partial to his earlier, artistic concerns. And dare say that while he has passed into legend principally through his martyrdom, it is his poetry that will live on as the true mark (and divine spark) of his genius.

It’s all here in Salvaged Poems, which a committee formed by his friends managed to collect and entrust under his widow Lali de Vera Lacaba’s loving care, and Pete Lacaba’s assiduous scholarship, a decade after his death.

That first printing featured a book cover in stark, simple white. The reissue has a darkly colored pattern for the cover, with Eman’s brooding visage staring distantly, defiantly, from a corner. It is his second daughter Emanwelga Fe Lacaba who is credited with the cover concept, with the design executed by Florencio Fernandez, while the book design is by Nora V. Dela Cruz. Eman’s older daughter Miriam Manavi Mithi Mezcaline Mendiola Lacaba shares the copyright with her sister.

The celebrated poetry is all here, from the early verses when Eman was still a teener, to the Death Cycle poems he entrusted me with the last typescript of, to the final poems written when he was already a rebel, a "people’s warrior" as he liked to call himself and others like him who went against Marcos’ martial rule in a heroic way.

Going through this book is tripping down memory lane, bittersweetly. Like his brief, romantic life, Eman Lacaba’s poetry went through the full route, blazing through cycles of formalism, casual impressionism, personal meditation, insight and philosophy, intense lyricism, a lover’s serial dalliance with pulchritude and camaraderie, mysticism, humble hommage to fellow artists, and finally, the simplicity of Pinoy defiance in the service of "the masses as Messiah."

Interspersed with the much-published poems in English are his verses in Tagalog (including the "Popoy Dakuykuy" cycle); translations of foreign poets into Tagalog; "In Search of Superguru: Lyrics for an Imaginary Rock Album"; and the brief, haiku and haiku-like verses he composed for a collaborative feature page in a magazine, in complementation with photographic images by Romy Vitug.

Eman Lacaba’s classic poems, to my mind, would include the early "Birthday" ("Like fire and ocean, now that he has become a man,/ He is still a child; but not one movement/ Of the fire will be repeated, nor of the ocean."); "Ang Mga Yabag" (in full: "Ang mga yabag. Ay, walang ingay/ Ang mga yabag. Ngunit alam kong/ May mga yabag sa kanyang silid./ Kung sinuman siya, di niya marinig/ Ang mga yabag sa aking silid./ Di ko lang alam kung alam din niyang/ May mga yabag sa aking silid,/ Walang ingay man ang mga yabag."); "The Foreigners" with its typically brilliant trope as closure ("We stiffened like diplomats/ Called by nature at dinners of state."); the Villa-esque "Parable" (in full: ‘Go where I go,’ said wind to fire./ Having burned his way before,// The fire fought hard his former/ Friend, and yielded with the cry,// ‘Direction you may be, I/ Am still the blaze, the glory.’"); "Rare Lines from One Accustomed to Writing What’s Said to Be Obscure Poetry";

"Kundiman"; "To a Young Poetess"; "Poems in Spanish Forms Used by Rizal"; "Poems Using Tagalog Forms"; "Plane Trip"; "East"; "Pateros Blues" ("All I the brat of eight the brat of Death/ itched to write were elegies…"); "Epitaph" (in full: "Here lies one who could have long ago/ Been dead; who felt that every poem he wrote/ Was minor, love he dove into a glass of ocean;// Whose afternoons fidgeted and swore; whose cigarette/ Evenings drowned, without propriety,/ In bottles of his own invention."); and of course the celebrated, presumably final poem, "Open Letters to Filipino Artists," with its much-quoted Section III that starts with: "We are tribeless and all tribes are ours./ We are homeless and all homes are ours./ We are nameless and all names are ours."

This last – I say presumably final since it was written in Davao del Norte and dated January 1976, or two months before his death – ends thus: "…Awakened, the masses are Messiah./ Here among workers and peasants our lost/ Generation has found its true, its only home."

I have trouble accepting the veracity of the date given this valedictory, since errant memory says I received a typescript of the poem while Eman was still alive. The three sections were dedicated to writer-friends who went by reversed initials, or so I recall either Eman himself saying in a note, or was it the messenger who whispered such?

I believe I told Pete Lacaba about this when we were gathering the collection in 1985-86. The dedications are cited in Pete’s "Editor’s Notes": "The PP (Pateros Papers, referring to "the manuscript and typescripts ... found in Eman’s filing cabinets in our home town, Pateros...) has dedications: Section I, for ‘J.N., L.L.B., and B.O.L.’; Section II, ‘For A.R.F., I.V.A.R..A. and S.N.A.’; and Section III, ‘For O.F., J.B.S., and Y.M.S.’"

As far as I know, J.N. is Nick Joaquin, and the rest, except for a couple of the reversed initials, identify the following, in order: Bien Lumbera, Franz Arcellana, Amable "Tikoy" Aguiluz VI, Freddie Salanga, Franklin Osorio, and Sylvia Mayuga (Yuson). "B.O.L." and "J.B.S." I can’t figure out now. Perhaps Pete knows, and will tell us in the third edition.

In my Poetry class at Ateneo, I make it a point, every other semester, to acquaint the students with successful imagery and felicitous phrasing while extolling a fresh idea, concept or conceit. I have to thank Eman Lacaba all the time for a number of brilliant samples. I’ve already cited the closing lines of "The Foreigners," which employ a salutary simile.

Here are others.

From "Rare Lines...": "... A fist of cowards I/ (Whom other people call an educated man)/ Who cannot drop a glass, hurl stones at panes,/ Throw chairs around." Tough, taut, tight lines, with a prosody most young pets should learn to emulate.

From "Sailing Song": "(I watch wave after wave of paper roll/ from the sea’s typewriter carriage)...." Imagery sourced to Silliman Farm Beach in Dumaguete, and which Eman re-used elsewhere.

From "Poems in Spanish Poems...": "On the breast called Lecheria/ where goats are unicorns, moustaches beards,/ mothers mountains of manna,/ I find my Word of words/ buttoning my chest, my goose-flesh chest, my Lord’s/"

"Angels" in full: "It’s asked of angels: ‘Are they male or female?’/ The carvers answer: ‘Neither. They are marble.’"

"Haiku the 3 p.m. Light Would Have Written" in full: "There are two kinds of/ Grilles: the grilles themselves; then, their changing shadows."

My favorite is the haiku variant "Poem": "In puddles and rivers/ Pebbles hit bull’s-eyes/ Before targets are drawn."

Why, this is wisdom, perfectly crafted as small if terrific idea, matched by reverberating imagery. But then such an intriguing, splendid koan of a man and a poet was Emmanuel Lacaba.