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Minerva p.5

9

Gaudencio Cecilio apprenticed with

Perfecto and gave his hands and hours

To the Librería y Imprenta Mariana

 

The Minerva arrived from America

And Libertad reincarnated

Into Kalayaan into Katalingkasan

 

As the old colonists faded in came

The new: with a different tongue

Taught by the blond Thomasites

 

And many of the first speakers (and

Thinkers) in English were sent

To America as privileged Pensionados

 

Until the 50s Cecilio Press was

Form-translating the Western classics

Robin Hood and Robinson Crusoe

 

Count of Monte Cristo Hamlet Moby Dick

Three Musketeers Les Miserables

Iliad and Othello including our own

 

Noli me Tangere & El Filibusterismo

The supplications of the Perdon

The ancient epic fragment Ibalon:

Bikol was doing its own Traslacion of roots

And meaning from the cadenzas and

Cambios of the corrido metrical romance

 

Into the awit asin korido of the Balyana

And paratugtog: By the rhythms

Of the paraoma’s taruk bending and

 

Rising in the paddies the paso dobles

And cumparsitas into the beat

Of the talutang and bongkol seeding

 

Upland rice: By the tongue and

Pen of the poets Antonio Salazar  

And Rosalio Imperial, Bikol conjured

 

Layà and Talingkas from Freiheit

And Libertad and the European colonist’s

Entablados into People’s Theater

 

The Word—agent of insidious

Nationalism—secretly thrived inside

Pamphlet novenas and catechism

CecilioPamphlets.jpg
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