the way she shattered every mullioned pane to let a firebrand in

Soledad
Angela Manalang Gloria

It was a sacrilege, the neighbors cried,
The way she shattered every mullioned pane
To let a firebrand in. They tried in vain
To understand how one so carved from pride
And glassed in dream could have so flung aside
Her graven days, or why she dared profane
The bread and wine of life for some insane
Moment with him. The scandal never died.

But no one guessed that loveliness would claim
Her soul’s cathedral burned by his desires
Or that he left her aureoled in flame…
And seeing nothing but her blackened spires,
The town condemned this girl who loved too well
and found her heaven in the depths of hell.

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Most people know Angela Manalang-Gloria solely for her poem To The Man I Married. But I think more than being limited to that particular piece, Manalang-Gloria should be recognized for her other poems that make better, more organic use of the language, and reflect an experience with so much precision that you feel as if you yourself were the subject, as if you yourself went through the experience you were just reading about. Such is the power of Soledad.

Its meticulously selected and charged use of language endows it with such strength. After reading it the first time, I felt compelled to reread it to see once more, how the words—mullioned, firebrand, profane, bread and wine, aureoled, blackened spires, that all reflect the sacred—are so intertwined, how packed they are, and therefore powerful. It doesn’t even seem like some random metaphor that could easily be extended by any able writer with an effusive vocabulary. It had to reflect religion, because a love like that could only either glorify or crucify.

Aside from the careful selection of words, it’s also their arrangement, so melodious that each verse seems to end with an invisible bar line. “To understand how one so carved from pride / and glassed in dream, could have flung aside / her graven days.” While reading, I felt like I was singing the words, save for first stanza’s last, abrupt line that cut me open with its hacking truthfulness: “The bread and wine of life for some insane / moment with him.” That enjambment that separated “moment with him” from the entire sentence, and the dissonance of those three words amidst the flow of the rest, made me really feel the rupture the man’s memory created in Soledad. That’s exactly how it is—I know.

Lastly, the final verse. I’m still trying to guess at the story’s ending, especially because of the first few lines of this last stanza: “Because no one guessed that loveliness would claim / Her soul’s cathedral burned by his desires / Or that he left her aureoled in flame…” Initially I thought that Soledad went insane, but when it was said that she was claimed by loveliness, I had to ask myself “Can insanity actually be a lovely thing?” Plus, to be aureoled in flame connotes something saintly, like pentecost that gifted the apostles with the ability to speak in tongues. At first I thought that she was engulfed with shame but was she, really, if she was haloed by pain?

So the way I saw the poem changed. It was no longer a lamentation of a love lost but how the sacrilege of heartbreak can be transfigured, the way an artist makes something beautiful from even the most horrendous objects. The meaning can get confusing because of how it changes according to the reach of my understanding and empathy. But this confusion of meaning is exactly the joy of unraveling a poem—it is never final; there is always another layer to unwrap. Maybe after reading it again, the way I see it will either evolve or be further reinforced. Maybe life will hand me an experience that will allow me to live Manalang-Gloria’s writing. Maybe not.

But such is the power of poetry, it can grow on you, into you, or with you.

it lasts for always

The Velveteen Rabbit (an excerpt)
Margery Williams

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

to you from failing hands we throw

In Flanders Fields
By John Macrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

never forget, never again

The History Teacher
Billy Collins

Trying to protect his students’ innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
“How far is it from here to Madrid?”
“What do you call the matador’s hat?”

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom
on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.