so it begins when it begins
    blasé grass serrates
past herds of carabao dreaming anxiously
  of the day's toil;

the countryman stilts through
   mounted in gray mountain
with dippers, casserole, mirrors
with imprints of ******* clad women
    and women who are (really ******* clad) ready for bathing work,
    collections of red days and even
    tenderly the ***** sing attenuated songs of rooming-houses —

  the crunch of basil over the afternoon.
waft of a pasture's death my eyes well
    up rivers and ponds of elation. dog days, feral nights limp behind rusted
   kennels and makeshift asylums

   there is nothing left of the world
(this small world
            that only rises when bellows
  of festivities harangue the many streets
             bending in them, the curve)
  men moving from neck to neck
    of bottles — (in the north there
      is only four corners of bottle: gin,
   pristine brook; in the Visayas is
      the redolent Vino Kulafu of the same
   potency) plucked out of the vermilion
   and on benched careening on half-painted gates crooning Sinatra
     gets stabbed, bloodied on the floor,
named after elegies; native chicken held
     upside down and beheaded as many blacker days stifled; what do you make
    out of this?
    
      carabaos, equines, hens line up
   the slaughterhouse behind the
      TODA; you know a fine day when
         it happens — breaking eggs
  against the lip of the kaldero. crumbled
    archaic sensurround, barrage of
      simmer round the clock cycling
before the child wakes and wails to suckle
          our mothers, faster than repose
  of milbrightlions of stars falling asleep
      to silent radios, leaving windows
   open revisited by the eve of cold.