Monday, April 5, 2010

Bitter Words

pagsasalin ng 'tonight i can write the saddest lines' ni pablo neruda

Kaya kong magbitiw ng bitter words ngayong gabi.
Mag-scribble-skribulan halimbawa: "Ang gabi ay pilantod
at nangangalantutay, bugbog-sarado, ang mga bituin sa malayo.
Paroo't parito ang hangin at ngumangawang parang baka.

Kaya kong magbitiw ng bitter words ngayong gabi.
Labs ko sya, at minsan daw labs nya rin ako.
Sa mga gabing tulad nito, nilalamas ko sya sa aking kandungan.
Nilalaplap ko sya sa silong ng marvelous na kalangitan.
Labs nya ko, at minsan labs ko rin sya.
Panong di ko mamahalin ang malalaki't
bilugan nyang mga mata --- parang pugita?

Kaya kong magbitiw ng bitter words ngayong gabi.
Imagine kong wala sya sakin. Ma-feel kong na-lost ko na sya.
Mapakinggan ko ang gabing OA, mas lalong OA dahil wala sya.
At ang talinhaga ay dumidila sa malay tulad ng hamog sa talahib.
Ano pa bang meron dyan, Ineng, kung hindi sya mapapasaakin?
Period. Sa malayo, may ngumangawa. Sa malayo.
Aburido ang multo ko sa pagkawala nya.

At para bagang nandyan lang sya sa tabi-tabi, hinahanap ko pa sya.
Hinahanap sya ng puso ko, kapag wala sya sa tabi ko.
Ang gabi ring ito'y nagkukulapol ng dirty white sa mga troso.
Hindi na kami ang dating kaming kami.
Hindi ko na sya labs, pramis, pero labs na labs ko sya dati.
Hinahagilap ng hininga ko ang hangin para bugahan sya.

Nilalaplap na sya ng iba, tulad ng paglaplap ko sa kanya.
Ang boses nya, ang seksi nyang wankata, ang for layp nyang mga mata.
Hindi ko na sya labs, pramis, pero medyo labidabs ko pa rin sya.
Maigsi lang ang labyap ko pero ang makalimot,
sangkatutak na 50 golden years ang inaabot.

Dahil sa mga gabing ganito nilalamas ko sya sa aking kandungan,
Aburido ang multo ko sa pagkawala nya.
Kahit ito na ang last chance ko para magmaasim
at ito na rin ang huling chuminess ko sa kanya.

-----
at ang walang kamatayang english version

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

On Ethics as Being-for-others

'thus conscience makes cowards of us all'

It is said that Ethics is beyond the essence of exsistence as such that it 'does not supplement a preceeding existential base' (Levinas, 1985). Ethics is beyond the 'what is' of being, and is instead presupposing the 'what ought to be' of the 'what is' (Cohen) as if reworded this way, the 'what ought to be' is a unilateral phenomenon of the progression of the 'what is'--of being beyond existing which is therefore beyong being in itself. How, then, is this unilateral transition of the 'what is', what as the being, is as the essence, towards 'what ought to be', ought as the Ethics of being (to be), possible?

'the very node of the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as responsibility' (Levinas, 1985) Ethics, as can be said, is responsibility. Levinas was adamant to say that this responsibility is the responsibility for the Other and not for the self or the being of oneself. In the 'I am' it is the I independent of the am that is responsible, the I which so continually escapes the am in order to be ethical par responsible; escape of being of the I in itself to say that the I is not the I of the am but the is of the Other. Given such grounds, how can the I be ethical, be responsible to the Other? By virtue of Ethics, the I ceases to exist. And in its escape from being, being as a solitary state of existence, the being becomes a being-for-others, responsible for the Other and is therefore ethical. But then again, it is the being I that is the being-for-others. And it is the similar I that in order to be-for-others escapes the being in itself. What then is this I that is no longer in a sense a being of existence as it so eagerly escapes existence to be ethical? In order to be ethical, if one can say that Ethics is the being that is the end of being and essence, the I must cease to exist; the I is replaced, as the end of being, as a being-for-others--being-for-others as a 'synthesis' of the I and the Other. Ergo, the I is no longer an I in itself, and no I is involved in Ethics because it does not deserve to be.

And if by such we have supposed the non-existence of I in Ethics, what then is the Other? the I no longer I but a being-for-others is responsible for the Other. And in a utopian sense of the phenomenon, it can be said that the Other is also a being-for-the other in itself. But the Other, in being ethical, ceases to exist in itself nonetheless, does not become an I but a being-for-others escaping its own being. What is the Other but a being-for-others that is not at all itself. And if the Other is also an I that ceases to exist, what exactly are we responsible for? One paradoxically becomes responsible to a being-for-others responsible to another being-for-others and so forth and so on. Simply put, one that ceases to exist in itself is responsible for another that ceases to exist in itself. Nothing is responsible for nothing. Without the I one is nothing; nothing in a sense that the I is transient and dependent on the others in its definition of being-for-others, nothing in a sense that it ceases to exist in itself. If there is no I in the being-for-others and the Other is also a being-for-others, then the being-for-others which is nothing in the first place is responsible for the Other which is also nothing.

there is no I. there is no Other. there is no Ethics. (?)