(It would help improve this short paper anyway, which has a 2-pages limit.)

When butterflies in a father’s garden become a discovery

Understanding what justice means at a young age through circumstances uncontrolled by man, instead, governed by nature. That was how the persona in the poem “Drought” by Larry Ypil describes the scenery he witnessed – the butterflies’ wings swiftly replacing every leaf that was gone from the tree, a response to the crime considered as drought which caused the persona’s (a 4-year old) grief.

What is kept from the reader in this text is the nature of the grief’s source, how the disappearance of leaves can vastly affect the emotions of the little child, who, at the moment, is lifted from sorrow to surprise as he marvel at the sight of butterflies replacing every leaf that was gone. Therefore, the meaning of this spectacle before his eyes is something only the readers could give with the influence of their own subjectivity and perspective.

To integrate the poet’s perspective in the comprehension of “Drought” is discouraged from the readers; Joyce and Eliot believed that “detachment is the counterpoise to his deep sense of unreality, or equivocal reality, in personal emotions”. However, hearing the memories that have driven the creative process of this poem and his poetry collection, “The Highest Hiding Place” leaves more questions answered that it would have had no incorporation of memory was made. Assuming (with strong conviction) that this one is a product of who the poet was when he was young, a reading with the same textual and greater circumstantial evidence can be extracted.

When Ypil narrated in “Wallpaper Poetics: The Creative Process Behind ‘The Highest Hiding Place’” the series of events that eventually led to the selection of the final cover of his book, it became apparent that his poetry collection was, by far, the most personal piece I read (I have no opportunity to explore the closeness-to-the poet’s-experience of other poetry books that I have). His original layout designer Adam David has prepared several designs that reflect the poems’ themes, poet’s personality and/or the poetics of the collection itself. Some almost made it, others were just way off the mark. However, it was not David’s creations that made it on the final piece; it was the discovery of the poet himself on the summer of 2008 in Cebu, in his home where he had his bedroom as he grew up.

His bedroom walls were once laden with wallpaper too feminine for his being masculine, or for being a male perhaps. Asserting who he is (physically) in the past was something he had to contrive with himself as a young boy; he admitted that as a kid he already started to have doubts about his sexuality. The wallpaper did not help, and so one time, he began to tear this decor from the walls, possibly thinking that by its removal, his doubts about himself would be vanished. (Barely 30 years from that time, I am a testament that this is a battle lost, although ‘lost’ may be an improper term because I believe he is contented and blissful of his sexuality right now.) This is the same wallpaper that graces the cover of his poetry collection, with a tear that first captures the attention of its reader; this tear, as he told us, might possibly be the same one he caused when he was still at conflict with his true self. This cover, he added, spoke of family, sexuality, desire, religion, father and his garden. He mentioned also of butterflies (in his father’s garden probably) that spoke the same way as the mariposa that landed on Rustom Padilla’s lap did, provoking him to admit his true sexuality despite the ugly rumors it might bring.

Combining all of these in my understanding of the poem, I came about with a reading more plausible and closer to that of the poet’s experience. Let the butterflies stand for his true sexuality, its beauty signifying the magnificence of the truth. Let the drought be the loss of his known identity (thereby leading to the “tree without leaves, and a sky without rain” (2); conclusion would be more grounded if the leaves were specified to be fig leaves, after all, they represent masculinity). The suspension of its meaning may be related to the persona’s unpreparedness to accept the significance of the wonder he sees, as his “awe refuses” (13-14). These all took place in his father’s garden that he considered guilt (19) to which he “blamed” or attributed the midway (of his sexuality) he was situated in. If ever there was one thing positive about this occurrence, he described the wounds (that of the garden which suffered drought and himself) to be a “place for some version of grace to descend” (17-18). To end the poem, he beckoned the sun who caused the heat that wrought the drought to remember what it did on his father’s garden, which became his place of discovery.

Of course, there may be a nuance or a farfetched concept in the reading; the reader is not involved in the creative process of his poem anyway. However, when he mentioned that [writing] is about “who we are and why we write, I know I am going to defend my understanding. I look at him these days and reflect upon the poem, and I can tell you it makes sense. In the end, butterflies are justice as his poem is his justice.

Trivia: Adding few words to it, will make it an instant 3-page paper.