Jose Garcia Villa's Works
Jose Garcia Villa was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973, as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by Conrad Aiken. He is known to have introduced the "reversed consonance rime scheme" in writing poetry, as well as the extensive use of punctuation marks—especially commas, which made him known as the Comma Poet. He used the penname Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle, Lion"), based on the characters he derived from himself.
POEM WRITTEN BENEATH A BLUE LAMPSHADE
I speak this poem tenderly
It being for youAnd
For you only – We were not
Afraid and we did take love
Gorgeously.
We had no fears.
We knew love we knew it and
We were dancers for itAnd also
We were rivers, we were moonlight
And also we were windsAs also
We were gods. And all this
Is remembrance, and all this
Is desire.
But also it is love.
Lyric 17
I can no more hear Love’s
Voice. No more moves
The mouth of her. Birds
No more sing. Words
I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows
Pale. No more blows
The wind. Time tells
No more truth. Bells
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—O my God! I am dead.
Lyric 57
My most. My most. O my lost!
O my bright, my ineradicable ghost.
At whose bright coast God seeks
Shelter and is lost is lost. O
Coast of Brightness. O cause of
Grief. O rose of purest grief.
O thou in my breast so stark and
Holy-bright. O thou melancholy
Light. Me. Me. My own perfidy.
O my most my most, O the bright
The beautiful the terrible Accost.
Lyric 22
O lovely. O lovely as panther. O
Creation’s supremest dissenter.
Enter. Teach me thy luminous ire.
O jewelled, pacing, night-displacing
Fire. O night’s nimble-dancing, No-
Saying lyre. Embrace me. Defy me.
Reave me. None shall defend me.
Not God. Not I. Purify me. Consume
Me. Disintegrate me to thy ecstasy.
O lovely and without mercy. O dark-
Footed divinity. O lovely and terrible.
O death irreducible. O unimpeachable.
Fragment
Anchored Angel
And,lay,he,down,the,golden,father,
(Genesis’,fist,all,gentle,now).
between,the,Wall,of,China,and,
The,tiger,tree(his,centuries,his,
Aerials,of,light)…
Anchored,entire,angel!
He,in,his,estate,miracle,and,living,dew,
His,fuses,gold,his,cobalts,love,
And,in,his,eyepits,
O,under,the,liontelling,sun--
The,zeta,truth—the,swift,red,Christ.
First, A Poem Must Be Magical
First, a poem must be magical,
Then musical as a seagull.
It must be a brightness moving
And hold secret a bird’s flowering
It must be slender as a bell,
And it must hold fire as well.
It must have the wisdom of bows
And it must kneel like a rose.
It must be able to hear
The luminance of dove and deer.
It must be able to hide
What it seeks, like a bride.
And over all I would like to hover
God, smiling from the poem’s cover.
And If the Heart Can Not Love
And if the heart can not love
death can not cure it nor sleep
no splendor of wound the heart
had no sound
Bloom has escaped it and
birth the miraculous flower
and music and speech leave
it unbewitched
God it can not spell nor sun
nor lover the beautiful word
and it has no sound no sound
nor wound
When I Was No Bigger Than A Huge
When, I, was, no, bigger, than, a, huge,
Star, in, my, self, I, began, to, write,
My,
Theology,
Of, rose, and,
Tiger: till, I, burned, with, their
Pure, and, Rage. Then, was, I, Wrath-
Ful,
And, most,
Gentle: most,
Dark, and, yet, most, Lit: in, me, an,
Eye, there, grew: springing, Vision,
Its,
Gold, and,
Its, wars. Then,
I, knew, the, Lord, was, not, my, Creator!
--Not, He, the, Unbegotten—but, I, saw,
The,
Creator,
Was, I—and,
I, began, to, Die, and, I, began, to, Grow.