IX

Let us go, then, 

Take our placards with the blood of lilies.

Stand them in the corner. Await the arrival

Of the stinkbug, grasshopper, firebug.

“Friend, what shall we write?”

“Town-mate, the palm of this hand had been

Shaped by poverty, how much for an hour?”

“Matches, comrade, matches.

Let us now burn these notebooks, these books;

Burn them now! Where, where is 

The placard fiesta?”

That way he will arrive or pass,

Draw near, the old man

Whose cane is his eyes,

Looking for his own yard, his own

Rice field, his own jungle, his own

Grave.

At the beginning of drawing near,

At the beginning of going far,

Between going far and drawing near—

My friend, my friend!

There will be no day, no day at all

That you and I will not be wounded.

 

X

The rustling exhorts the mind,

Let us into the expanse of the mysterious stirring,

The hair-raising anonymous scratching

Of whatever it is that trills and chirrs,

The thud and tear and rasp and gasp

Of whatever’s unknown anywhere.

The cogon and talahib sway to the rhythm

Among the paddies, the mud banks.

The wild doves rap and tap among the shafts 

Of the bamboo clump. The mayas lament at something

In the thicket. The irrigation ditch dries.

From here can be seen the spotted roofs.

—Look, there is the bent old man,

Beside the beam of the parked old plow,

Slowly fanning himself with his worn straw hat

As he squints to make us out, because

He has been waiting for us.

Child of the talinduwa, child of the takipan.

Child of straw, of bagasse, salay-maya.

Which birthcry is longer sibling

To the beast-moan and horn?

At our approach, now the onrush 

Of the stirrings laden 

With the breaking of chains, 

Chains broken by teeth, muscle, feet, caret.

The river is rising. The mind is overflowing.

The pains of the centuried dream mingle.

“Break the cane on the jaw of Kabesang Tano!”

“Smash the cigar in the mouth of Don Ramon!”

“Ach, sputum on Julita’s sleeve!”

“Bird shit on the head of Don Filemon!”

Their history is a generation of placards

And long banners. Each placard

Is as light as a heart of straw;

To the hand holding it, they pass and exchange—

The centuries: O burden of centuries,

O burden of the world!

At noon,

The moon is a newly honed scythe

Near our pillow.

“What to do with bolo?”

“To cut rattan.”

“What to do with rattan?”

“To hang the neck of Kapitan.”

O calves and shins, limbs scratched by blades of grass. 

Let us, let us, with a smile on our lips,

Bring the scratches to our mind and consciousness,

To our eyes, to our breast.

O horse grass and rice bran among

The squares of rice field, mud banks, paddies.

O tinkle of the shackles of time

In our dreams!

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