Traslación

ëd Sakbay ya Onsëlëk so Banwa
narngël ko’y un-uni na Ilocandia*

(sa Ang Araw Bago Maglaho
narinig ko ang mga huning Ilocano)

Laguna de Bay—dagat as the locals call it—is an expanse of languages. There is no heart sharper that a bangkâ cutting through dialects and accents toward Talim. Along Cuzner, under foreign palms, they shared a laugh in Binisaya. I heard my feet murmur fractals of envious curses. A white boy once approached me at the airport while waiting for a flight back home. He asked me for some ringgit of which I gave him. A brown man across me, thinking I was Malay, spoke to me in a language decipherable only through centuries of oppression. At the edge of Banuyo, where foliage begins to thicken, always always turn left. There, a forest of impenetrable sounds.

* First lines of Santiago Villafania’s “sonito 69” from Malagilion. Sakbay ya Onsëlëk so Banwa is Sergio A. Bumadilla’s Pangasinan translation of Jaime P. Lucas’ Sakbay a Lumnek ti Init.