Gravity” is a form of rebellion. I like to think that there is no conflict between science and art. Poetry is still science. A poet is a philosopher. She tends to understand the forms and meanings around her. As a poet, she is the maker of meaning and as a philosopher, she enlightens it.
The poem “Gravity” is a story of defying gravity as a form of a woman’s escape from the horrors of being a woman. In this case, the only way to defy gravity is to climb a tree and never to fall down.
Women get tired of being mothers. Women get tired of being wives. Women get tired of being women. And so they run away. They become like chameleons, hiding in the trees, in the trunks. Finally, they disappear.
I always have problems with the revision process. It worries me knowing I am rearranging the words because they might change the idea. But of course, the readers always have their own interpretation and it is their right.
And so here are my versions of “Gravity”:
The first draft:
Woman
Climb on a coconut tree
With no thought of gravity to pull you down
Let your feet cling to its body
Forget your children
crawling on the ground now
like hungry beasts waiting to be fed by your sagged breasts
Your skirt sails with the wind
[You would have wanted to let it strip you naked]
Continue climbing
And forget about gravity
While your long hair dances
with no gracefulness at all
Let your hands grip tightly
Until your every fingernail scratch the skin of the tree
And not his own skin
that has been scratched many times by different fingernails
Forget about gravity
Forget about falling down again
on his lies
on the horror of the little mouths sucking your now dark nipples
Climb higher
Forget about your clitoris
Forget about your breasts
There is no woman
only trees.
The final draft:
Gravity
Climb a tree
With no thought of gravity to pull you down
Let your feet grip tightly to its body
Forget your children
Crawling on the ground
Like beasts waiting to be fed on your sagging breasts
As your skirt calmly sways in the wind
Go on, climb
Forget about gravity
Let your long hair dance
Clasp the trunk tighter
Forget your fingernails you once clawed
On your husband’s skin
Every time he returns home
Scratched by different fingernails
By different sins
Think not of gravity
Of falling down again to his lies
And the horror of little mouths sucking
Your dark nipples raw
Climb higher
Forget about your hair
Forget about your skirt
Forget about your breasts
Forget about your clitoris
There is no woman
Only trees
“Gravity” was published last March 2008 in Dagmay, a literary journal of the Davao Writers Guild
http://dagmay.kom.ph/2008/03/09/gravity/
