CARLO REY LACSAMANA

Suite Lerici (A Traveler’s Guide to Longing)

(Lerici, 2017-2022)

Here I am, back to the origins of longing
looking at the sky
wanting to begin, returning to the end.

From one railway to another is nothing
but a way to arrive somewhere in life.
You who sit by the window in a room, on a train,
on a bus, in a small café
groping the birdpath with your heart,
if you could seize a pair of wings
would you haul the clouds on your back and disappear?
We travelers from faraway land
our search is for water.
In the eyes of every stranger we meet
is a fountain, each new landscape a syllable of home.

Where the sun splash in abundance
life is there in the leap, in the birds’ flight
towards the South, in every iridescent scale
of a fish jumping over the water, in the
silent intensity of every plant, every finger
of the palm trees screaming its speech of green.

*

Breathless we reach the sun-tanned limbs of the town,
at its feet a blanket of small boats warms the harbor,
on its forehead a castle peeking seaward into the keyhole
of the sky.
The parade of pastel-colored houses indicts
our ravening hunger for belonging.
We wished to stay where the tides sink the heart
in astonishment.
Stay we cannot. We can only stand witness
to the church bells chiming the marvel of being here
and the breathtaking presence of the sea which binds
all destinies to their course.

We stop by a café walled by a succulent string of orange trees.
The smell of coffee has landscapes, coastlines at the edge
of its bitterness, orange peelings between our silences.
In the piazza the cry of seagulls oils the air,
empty benches facing the coast await reconciliation,
falling and rising streets dance over the noon tempo
of summer, heaps of fishnets smell of voyages at dawn,
of naked lamps adrift in the darkness, of men yawning
out their dreams.

The upturned boats are like your breasts pointed towards the sky,
palm trees raise their sweaty arms in the air,
houses peek through the soft curtains of sunlight,
out in the porch fumes of fish on a grill,
wine and bread on the table threaded together
by anecdotes of clinking glasses.
Lemons bursting from the cliffs, laurel, basil,
rosemary, sage spill their perfumes at the windowsills.
I long for the sea in someone else’s body.

*

My heart opens to the world
like a lizard coming out of the rock’s crevice.
There are places which plunge us to our knees,
drench us with a thirst which can only be quenched
by longing.

Can you hear the sea open its door? The footfalls
of the sun slide from the hilltop down to the secret beach?
In the iridescent waters Shelly’s voiceless body
floats like a lost sail cleaving the horizon.
Traveling is a preparation for letting go.

The town of Portovenere blazes sorrow-eyed
in the distance. Tomorrow it will be a star
in the archipelago of memory.

You standing there speechless, watching
the beauty of a faraway town rescue your homelessness,
holding on a rail of grief to keep you in place.

Poetry starves us because it is a well of losses,
like fossils sealed in a glass case,
footprints of a thousand years etched on rocks.
This is how we rescue our love:
we snatch each other’s heartbeats
we exhibit each other’s wounds.

My lips have grown trees,
I have nothing to say that doesn’t resemble a bird,
a breeze, a flower, a piece of sunlight,
I stand listening to the murmurs of the sea.
If I open my mouth a song snaps out,
if I raise my leg a journey withdraws,
I have nothing to write which does not translate
into longing.

Poets keepers of longing, defenders of what has been,
priests of meetings and partings.

*

As the seagulls unroll a thin carpet of crimson,
and the moan of a distant train behind the hills
tears the landscapes apart,
wandering between unrepeatable summer days,
give thanks for you’ve made it this far,
give thanks to what cannot happen again.

You will understand this
when the leaves walk out of the fists
of summer.
Longing accumulates for every
memory that slips from our hands.
The end of a voyage may just be the beginning
of a poem. The sunset
will be different this time.
The ending will not be mourned,
the sunset will not be a meditation of departure
it will either be a gift or a warning.
Arrivals happen only once,
the second time is departure,
and the end of love is a one-breath sentence.
Remembering, we arrive.

Carlo Rey Lacsamana is a Filipino writer, poet, and artist born and raised in Manila, Philippines. Since 2005, he has been living and working in the Tuscan town of Lucca, Italy. He regularly contributes to journals in the Philippines, writing politics, culture, and art. His works have appeared in Esquire Magazine, Colossus Magazine, Drunkmonkeysweb, Amsterdam Quarterly, Lumpen Journal (London), The Wild World (Berlin), Literary Shanghai and in other numerous magazines. His short story Toulouse has been recorded as a podcast story in the narrative podcast Pillow Talking (Australia). Follow him on Instagram.