On windswept slope or cogon crest

Stretching into drop of shale or limestone,

They mark different islands: As if the felicitous

Native name would mark modes and areas

Of living: squares of upland rice, stripes of 

Sweet potato, stands of buripalm, rows of taro, 

And trunks of coconut, sparse and slender,

Dotting the swards cropped close by long-horned 
 

Brahmin and whiskered goat filling their udders.

Designating patches of tillage and long habit,

They enable the coming of the communal

And the solitary, each to his own square

To turn the brown sod, or all hands to tend

The green if the crop is heavy, but guided

By the short summer, all hands to reap

The rainbow. So it was among these

Quilted hills, they say. So it was when they

Thatched the stone-walled rakuh with reed

​

And cogon in the neighborhoods among

The lower slopes and streets. Oh, what a feast