SLEEP NOT O! POETIC INSTINCT!

SLEEP NOT O! POETIC INSTINCT!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

No, lost shan’t you be.

Not when the voltages of inspiration’s currents

Flow like undiminished floods of recurrent

Seawaves upon imagination’s canvasses.

Let me find and catch you

In your deep slumber: ‘tis not your sad departure.

You’ve bid me no goodbye, not that I remember.

O! Poetic instinct of my inner chambers!

Come out of your doors when I have

Need of your benevolent company.

[Writ. 08 Jan.’88, U.P. Village, Quezon City, M.Manila]

DON’T OFFER ME DIRGES (I’m But A Slum Habitue)

DON’T OFFER ME DIRGES (I’m But A Slum Habitue)

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Don’t offer me dirges or marches for graveyards

I am no more a rat eater whose niche

Is this make-shift tenement, no longer

Human by the yardsticks of Grecian perfection

And Roman artistry, a fragment too unfit

For the wholeness of Renaissance’s imageries.

May I invite to dinner my neighborhood’s constant visitors

From state halls and army barracks

Who on not too few occasions offered me

And my neighbors their version of a gift:

Bulldozed tenements and shanties leveled off

Spiced with gunfire that severed resistance.

Felled boys and dead bodies of urban poor

Anyway deserve not the hymns of public praises,

Praises long reserved for princes and taipans.

History’s everyday indeed can’t seem to be

An asset shared by all men alike.

[Writ. 06 Dec. 1988, Proj. 8 Quezon City, M.Manila]

PROMETHEUS IN ACADEMIA

PROMETHEUS IN ACADEMIA

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Welcome, Prometheus!

Descend upon the pillars and corridors of Academia!

Have your merriment and feasts among

The expectant adherents of your holy fire.

Illuminate the residents of Academia with your

Undying light: mana of reason and knowledge.

Awaken us to the flowering consciousness of the knower

As your light fires up the longing lamps of us all.

Remain! Linger on! Let your sacred essence be

Of the inherited Elixir of our triumphant march

Along Life’s trek!

Happy at last will be Zeus over our sublime fraternity.

[Writ. 11 November 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]