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For as the semiotician Roland Barthes correctly observes in A Lover’s Discourse: “Every object touched by the loved being’s body becomes part of that body, and the subject eagerly attaches himself to it. ” share in common? Besides being foldable and thus easy to keep, they must symbolize for the loving female persona important individuals and incidents in her life. The more important query therefore is this: What do “Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,/ A roto picture of a young queen,/ A blue Indian shawl, even/ A money bill. But since a literary sorceress like Tiempo seldom commits mistakes in conjuring appropriate images, then there must a be reason for singling out these particular items and not others.
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” What then are the things she considers imperative enough to keep? At first glance, the catalogue of her beloved objects in the second stanza appears to be disparate, unrelated, almost random, if not completely aleatory. In the first stanza, the persona declares that she folds everything that she loves and keeps them hidden in secret places: “a box,/ Or a slit in a hollow post,/ Or in my shoe. However, despite the false lead, even a cursory perusal of the poem reveals to the sensitive and sensible reader that “Bonsai” is about love, if only because the four-letter word is mentioned in all four stanzas. But this reader will prove at the end of this essay that “Bonsai” is the most appropriate title for the poem, something that is not quite obvious to most people after their perfunctory appraisal of this often misread literary masterpiece. Some might even argue that “Origami” is the better title choice, for at least the persona’s act of folding objects is a bit analogous to the Japanese art of paper folding to make complicated shapes. The title itself, “Bonsai,” is a bit misleading, since nowhere else in the poem are there any further references to plant life or the ancient Japanese technique of cultivating miniature trees or shrubs through dwarfing by selective pruning. Tiempo’s signature poem is a tad confounding, for the first lady of Philippine poetry in English deploys the centripetal-centrifugal-centripetal (or inward-outward-inward) motion in expressing her profoundest thoughts and deepest feelings about love.
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And life and love are real Things you can run and Breathless hand over
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It’s utter sublimation A feat, this heart’s control Moment to moment To scale all love down To a cupped hand’s size, Till seashells are broken pieces From God’s own bright teeth. Something that folds and keeps easy, Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie, A roto picture of a young queen, A blue Indian shawl, even A money bill. All that I love? Why, yes, but for the moment - And for all time, both. Bonsai All that I love I fold over once And once again And keep in a box Or a slit in a hollow post Or in my shoe.