Showing posts with label Central Luzon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Central Luzon. Show all posts

Sunday, July 18, 2010

PINATUBO MOUNT OF TRIUMPH

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Petrified is our inglorious state as people
Crystallized, our hopelessness and shame
We are but loathsome slaves on Planet Earth
Unfit as subject of a stately epic.

A nation of sleepwalkers we are, unblessed
An utterly coveted and sick people of Asia
Wantonly plundered by gluttonous alien Titans
And so too by local lords of similar mold.

Need we rise up from the mortified doldrums
To get back to the folds of Rizal’s grand era
To regain the trust in self built by Bonifacio
To foster again the sublimest nationhood.

Come forth, Pinatubo!
Thunder our valleys and hills
With your majestic voice
On the day of our national freedom!
You are the longed for herald of Apocalypse
Of our dim and stinking state.
Burn down the Sodoms and Gomorrahs of ours!
Demonic icons of imperial lust.
Bury the putrid old world with pyroclastics!
We shall regale the burial with wondrous dirges.

Why ought we wish you with infinite praises?
Why not indeed when you sprinkled vast lands
With ashes: mark of holiness a la Ash Wednesday?
O! majestic mount! You’ve heralded
Soon shall arise a glorious nation in our midst.
The holocaustal tapestry you’ve evoked
‘Tis but the birth pangs of greatness.
This nation, a Sun that others seek for Light
Undying—of justices, wisdom, compassion.

Hail! Sacred Pinatubo Mount of Triumph!


[Writ. 21 June 91, Cubao,Quezon City, M.Manila]

Saturday, May 22, 2010

MARSHES OF CANDABA

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


When hawks and other living flyers
Set foot on swampy fields for feeding
Tis a marvelous sight that glows the eyes
As mark of platonic appreciation

Where muddy waters used to fill
The air with constant foul-smelling vapors
And gift the neighboring men and women
With malaria and ailments and more
And leave no space that’s fertile enough
For crops and edible greens
And there vehicles run agog
When torrents bring oceanic floods
No more is this worthy of anyone’s esteem
Than to ignore it for its fecal state

Melons and fruits and rice now abound
In this once noxious forbidden land
No more is Hope rekindled the better
Than on the marshes of Candaba

Fly! Fly! Beloved Eagle to the peasant’s nest!
And laud him with your hymns of joy
For his victorious heartwarming travails on swamps
Indeed make him a true human champion.


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