The Light Sang As it Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography by Eileen Tabios

Marsh Hawk Press, 2007

Poems For
by GA. A. Banks-Martin

Eileen Tabios published her first book of poetry in 1996 and won the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry, fourteen collections followed. Her latest book seeks to creatively solve some of the most difficult of poetic problems: love, despair, hope without reason, and absolution. Therefore, it is with great excitement we read Eileen R. Tabios’ collection of poetry, The Light Sang As it Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography.

Almost immediately we are offered along prose poem; a father portrait, although it is not the one we expect. Most fathers spend the day working or looking for work, in everyday places: police stations, firehouses, cabstands, restaurants, employment agencies. They honestly collect $12,000-$35.000 a year; motivated by little more than the approval of their wives and children. Unless, he is Ferdinand Marcos, who stole as much as a 100 billion dollars, who was accused of 1500 extrajudicial killings, and played a part in the execution of a popular political rival. Who believes such a father can be loved? Tabios, who asks: How many centuries until it was known that Judas was Jesus Christ’s/greatest apostle, not his greatest betrayer?

Having learned that reconciliation is possible we move from prose to Hay (Na) ku, a simple form, created by the poet, requiring six words stanzas composed of three lines. A form that challenges the notion that a line must be longer than three words; instead a line should be less than three words when more would serve only to destroy the purity of what is said. Consider this selection from The Mushroom Chapter:

Back in London

each autumn

I

would receive a
bag of
dried

mushrooms. The last
one arrived
in

the autumn of
1939, shortly
after

the outbreak of war.

Ironically what causes the thirty year parting of Tabios and her biological father is too painful for/even a poem but many outstanding moments awaits the reader as the two are reunited then parted by death. Some oddly sad and funny such as when the poet purchases a card for her parents 5oth Wedding Anniversary: For You Mom And Dad/ in curlicue script/ Sentimental drivel. But the poet with five million/ poems/ couldn’t/ muster anything better, while others hearken a sense of peace and well being. Cantos are usually associated with Ezra Pound, and are so complex that readers purchase an index to add with comprehension but these much like the rest of the other poems, are very palatable:

Canto 4

We labor less
as we near our Goal.

As we near our Goal
so do we fly, not run.

So raise your dark feet
from upon “Morocco’s sands”

And perhaps you are looking today at a sky whose
blue sapphire radiance often makes her sing, and
you hear her singing now.

No need for a guidebook just a few moments of uninterrupted silence.