What Podium is Most Powerful than the Hearth?

(To Women Who Want the Podium)

(Idi ubingak, mariingak dagiti nagannak kaniak nga agpatpatang iti iddada iti parbangon. Maymaysa ti malagipko: natibtibong ti timek ni nanang
iti parbangon)


Your poets said, take the podium
Take the helm of years, make-up
For those ancient tears that soaked your hearth,
The bed, the cushions folded and refolded
To crush the baptism of your mind.
There is the future of standing naked and tough
Among the throngs of the unbelieving
And brutish beasts of men, tasked and tainted
To your fragrance, toys to your faints
In obeisance to your watery scepter, your wand
To strip this world of its phallic brand.
Brown woman, this is rebellion against the wind
Against bad history written in Western ink
Descent from Babai, by right of inheritance
Divinely conferred or wrested from ignorance-
This Eastern code prescribe your meaning
And yet they say, man proscribed your sighings?
Some brown greats who from suckling babe look up with eyes
Rainbow-rimmed, and silent, warmed your breast
Fate would drive them to claim their stake
In full remembrance will fall to your chest.
Call this bad, these men, returning with name
Crowning your womb with immortal fame?
Who says you don’t rule the chartered waters boiling
In the hearth, even your man’s musing-
There is the conference witnessed by dawn silent
With his ears wide open, when your voice
Commands the upper hand. This is loving
To sway the household woes to your wand
The neighbors’ throes in your brilliant dance
And the future staring through the needle’s eye!

What better podium you have than the ash-filled hearth
Arranging the firewood of men's pate and fate
Like one laughing, solid chorus?