Former Places

If I bury my poetry
underneath Manila skies
will it be as pitiful
as jasmines?

Watercolor paintings
and quaint daffodils,
they harbour sadness --
caged in syllables and meters,
suppressed by Chinese art
and Aquarian thoughts,
they may seem grand
but abandoned.

---

I've never been on this road
for a several months now.
The sunspots that used to be here --
making their way through tiny gaps
between dancing leaves
and embracing branches
of lonesome trees
when it's 9:00 AM
and you're just waking up
while the wind whistles the symphony
of a shining day --
are all gone now...

...it makes me sad.

Nostalgia --
I thought nostalgia is a rose
that's forgotten it's really a dandelion --
hiding its gentle fluffs
for reasons it doesn't know,
but I was wrong...

...and that makes me sad.

Flower towns, capital cities,
and willowed roads...
for what reason
you made them seem grand?
You made me feel like they're poetry.
But now,
they appear just like Mnemosyne to me --
memory-personified,
and it isn't enough.

You might have forgotten
the way you made me harbour hope
from a pale summer moon.

And even when things change,
in the heart,
they can remain unchanged.

(Everything makes me sad.)

My words are like jasmines,
but not as pitiful,
like capital cities,
but not as grand.

Tomorrow,
as forlornly as they shouldn't be,
swallows will fly
on a lonely sky...

...it makes me sad.