PRAYER SEASONS by HANSEL MAPAYO

ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN Reviews

Prayer Seasons by Bro. Hansel Mapayo

(Aria Editions, 2011)

Flash Book Review 283: 

Every time a poem enacts an intimate conversation between the creature and the Creator, readers sense its romantic/erotic undertones ("As you empty into a trough, / I swear to be a spring"). And there's no harm in it. Bro. Hansel Mapayo's Prayer Seasons (2011, Aria Editions) provides fine examples of creator-creature conversations. With the passionate use of internal rhyme, well-governed rhythms, and sparing caesuras, the prevailing persona reciprocates what God gives humankind: the breadth of His agape expressed in the intensity of eros. 

The poet assumes many roles, from a homecomer channeling a wandering child's soul to a flaneur in a foreign land, and between these roles is a consistent, unbending voice of adoration ("My lips depart to set free a sagging praise: / Ah, abundance herein dwells").

God's gifts of Bukidnon and Venezuela—as landscapes and subjects of Mapayo's paintings reminiscent of Monet's Les Villas à Bordighera—overwhelm the senses, but they hardly blind the poet to the miseries of his environs. The musicality of "Monsoon Rain Prayer" and "An Elegy of the Trees" (see both poems below) resonates with the Greek chorus in Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, and this socio-political consciousness renders his poetry a dual identity, as receptacle and as mouthpiece. Some of his poems recall friends and colleagues, even those he chanced upon in news headlines, who suffered under the wrath of nature and the greed of those who were supposed to be the nation's nurturers. 

The more he allows his diction to be accessed, the more the work sows itself in the reader's mind. It is only in profound thought that positive action comes. But in the midst of many misfortunes, his (and our) faith says that we hold on, that we lift our eyes and hands while mindful of our mythic ground. Faith is a response to revelation, and poetry does not only articulate the strength of our faith, but also aids us in expanding our hope. The poet beautifully said, almost bordering on an adage: "A cathedral lives in us / Even as we pray in a cogon thatch."

---

MONSOON RAIN PRAYER

Take our tears
Oh Font of grace.

Our siblings knock at our door
Asking for warm broth.

Don't you see the empty
Bowls on our table?

Bodies, nameless and faceless,
Still float in our rivers.

Our leaders continue to gaze
At their white-washed gates.

But the psalmist says,
"The floods of waters may reach high.
But him they shall not reach.
You are my hiding place, O Lord;
You save me from distress."

Cast your blessing as we come
To you with joined palms.

Breathe in your Spirit
To strengthen our faith.

Like pillars, though bent,
We shall brave the rains.

----

AN ELEGY OF THE TREES

Our trunks
Were not enough.
They took three masks
And felled your body.

Our limbs
Shrieked.

We held
Our breath
As the shot leapt
From leaf to leaf.

This Sunday,
As our bishop
Has declared—
The pews are empty.

As you pass by
Through the mourners' march,
We shake our leaves
To remember how
The loggers' greed
Cannot bring our grief
To the grave.

Now as you touch our feet,
We sheathe your casket
With unending company
Until you, like our leaves,
Turn to Mother
In an earthen embrace.

 

*****

Since 2016, Aloysiusi Polintan has worked as a Senior High School Principal in Divina Pastora College. He started scribbling poems and essays when he was 17 years old. These poems are still kept in a notebook and wait to be revised for future publication. This notebook will be revived and will give birth to language already "lived." That is why his blog is named "Renaissance of a Notebook," a blog of poems, personal and academic essays, and flash movie reviews. His book reviews, which are published and featured in The Halo-Halo Review and Galatea Resurrects, are also to be found on the blog, under the series title "Mesmerized." He believes that the ability to judge or critique a literary piece starts with the reader's being moved and mesmerized by the artful arrangement of words articulating some longing for freedom and individuality. He's now working on a manuscript of 50 poems, with a working title of Brittle Sounds.