Corpus as poetry: Lean Borlongan’s poems in translation

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Originally published in 2019, Lean Borlongan’s ‘Sa Ibang Katawan’ was his second collection of poetry. Written in Filipino, his verses introspectively examined the human corpus reconciling with disability: its brokenness, paradoxes, capabilities, relations, and inevitably, projections and refractions of the self on time, place, and materiality. Now, the volume is rejuvenated with a fresh English translation by writer Eric Abalajon.

Abalajon’s stark and straightforward translation sheds any frivolous pretense of florid language. Instead, it directly confronts the poetry of disability, giving the reader a raw dose of Borlongan’s sentiments and a window to his experiences: while the language is ‘foreign’, the semantics are very much embedded in the poet’s circumstance.

In finding Borlongan’s voice through a ‘foreign language’, Abalajon further invites and opens avenues of criticism and examination of the text. The translation highlights the persona’s experienced materiality in the poetry, without downgrading the reading as mere linguistic exercise. Set alongside the original Filipino, the translations seem to echo the volume’s established themes, thus further intensifying the reader’s intake of and connection with the poetry.

Gleaned much from personal experience, the poems are a redefinition of what constitutes disablement – they question the very idea. As in its initial release, Borlongan interrogates and breaks through the mores and social constructs which warp understandings of personhood and humanity, to paraphrase Ateneo professor Michael M. Coroza’s response to the poetry. To underline this nonconformity and resistance, interspersed in pages between the poems are scans of medical diagnostic and consultation reports, corroborating the physical and spiritual struggles poured and infused into the creation of these verses.

As such, the reader journeys through the entire volume once more with undiminished gravitas yet also with empathic understanding: one encounters again Borlongan’s exploration of selfhood, his deeply introspective scrutiny of vulnerabilities and their reframing as potentialities, the breaking of and resistance to personal inhibitions, the juxtaposition of the political and social with the personal, the erotic imagery interlaced with acceptance of flawed corporeality, and the examination and setting of spaces and objects vis-à-vis the self.

Translated as ‘A Different Body’, Borlongan’s poetic reflections written in Filipino simultaneously lose and take on nuances. The body of work becomes extended, assuming quite literally, a different corpus of poetry while keeping true to its soul.

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The act of translation is a tricky matter: traduttore, traditore – translator, traitor, the Italian pedants would say. It stems out of the recognition that there is something lost in the process, especially linguistic nuances which do not readily find direct parallels in the translated language – there is some ‘treachery’ done in robbing the author of his semantics. But another way of looking at it is what the translator brings into the text, that he likewise enfleshes a fresh reading into the work without necessarily diminishing meanings in between and beyond the lines.

And so it is with Borolongan’s poems. In Filipino, they are profoundly poignant and sharply personal; in Abalajon’s prosaic verse, they break through the confines of the original text while preserving the persona embedded in the poetry – as if it is in a different body.

(The writer is a language and literature teacher in one of the private schools of the city.)