Montage - Ophelia A. Dimalanta

MONTAGE

O. Alcantara-Dimalanta

            OPHELIA ALCANTARA-DIMALANTA graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Santo Tomas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1954. She has since been handling classes in literature and creative writing in the same university. Montage and Other Poems is a published collection of her poetry.

            “Montage” is probably Mrs. Dimalanta’s best-known work. It won the best-poem award of the Poetic Circle, a fortnightly publication of Iowa State University. Montage and Other Poems won a Palanca Memorial Award in 1974.

Monday jolts and she bogs down, a ragbag
Splayed off at tangents. Windows
To the outside and flecks of faces
Spring the morning clear to set her
Into her old dimensions. Piece by piece
She puts on eight o’ clock, pillows
And bedcovers in a tumble pat her
In place. The clearest outglass
Of grapefruit juice teetering on a silver
Tray for breakfast-in-bed exigencies
(Both for effect and effectivity)
Is for a fact but fictive in the mind.

Which holds the moment a little longer,
Stalls the stupor of the previous night,
Images of her beautiful in blank spaces,
Wandering truant like in a private region;
Clouds of night jammed in one wicked
Corner of sleep. She hoards them
Like a child and triumphantly pieces
Them into a total singular perspective;
Splayed-off tatters of mornings,
A dark undisciplined of clouds settled
Right into the atmosphere recreating
Her Monday-world, jolted suddenly
Into the teeth of everyday people
And cluttering pans of slapdash.
She exudes it now becomingly
As she glides and putters about
Alternately, spreads it as a haze
Enveloping her form, perfectly
Dissolved in solid tones and chromes.
A jewel durably ensphered in mist,
Old gold etched in ever-emerging shades.

Source: Serrano, Josephine B. (1988). A Survey of Filipino Literature in English. Quezon City: Phoenix Publishing House, Inc.