Municipal Hall

from Chai: Travel Poems by Marc Nair feat. Neon & Wonder

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lyrics

Municipal Hall

After dinner, I trudge in darkness
up the only road in Sagada. My dim-lit hostel
is shuttered and locked. No one answers.
The Baguio bus I’m booked on will leave
at first light. And now the cold begins
to whisper thoughts of rebel soldiers
wandering through hills, looking for
locked-out tourists to trap as trophies
of their revolution. The only game
in town is the Sagada Municipal Hall,
where the door is a crack of light
opening to wooden benches. Could I nap
here, where tourists wait for day guides
to lead them through the caves? Inside,
low voices rumble. The police post
is a hub of warmth and open faces.
I explain myself. An officer follows me
to the hotel. It’s a lost cause. Heaven recalled
their angels early tonight. The wry policeman,
who reminds me of a weathered gunslinger,
offers his blanket and the meeting table
in the middle of the municipal hall. It is
all we have, he says. So I lie on this creaking
table of heavy decisions where roads,
houses and committees forged a village upon
these hard mountains of the Cordillera.
All around me, policemen fart and groan
in their sleep, lying with no blankets
on the floor, the cold a familial ache
that has long settled in their bones.
Morning. I sip hot tea with the chief.
He hopes his children, sent to university
in Baguio, have learned enough
not to come back to Sagada, where
only one road comes and goes.