By EDITH LOPEZ TIEMPO

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.

All that I love?
Why, yes, but for the moment—
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a beauty queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

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,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.

Edith Lopez Tiempo was born in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya in 1919. After her marriage to Edilberto Tiempo in 1940, the couple moved to Dumaguete City, where she earned her BA in English in 1947. She later pursued her MA at the University of Iowa as part of the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, graduating in 1950. In 1958, she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Denver in Colorado in 1958. In 1962, together with her husband, she co-founded the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. Her books include the short story collection Abide, Joshua and Other Stories [1964], the poetry collections The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems [1966], The Charmer's Box and Other Poems [1993], Beyond, Extensions [1993], and Marginal Annotations and Other Poems [2010], and the novels A Blade of Fern [1978], His Native Coast [1979], The Alien Corn [1992], One, Tilting Leaves [1995], and The Builder [2004]. She has also published books on literary criticism, including Six Uses of Fictional Symbols [2004] and Six Poetry Formats and the Transforming Image [2008]. She has received awards from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas from UMPIL, as well as from the Palanca and the Philippines Free Press. She was proclaimed National Artist for Literature in 1999. She died in 2011.