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Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


O! Time!
What art thou whence gone
Art thou into the mortuaries
Apoplexied asphyxiated amputated
Moves thee no longer in the halls
Where two souls ought be-toke
Their selves twixt binds of Eros’ rope
And ‘twere none a-rope but gallows
Of death before grown and born is
The love before them love lost
Unenchanted a-cursed a-gruelled
O! Time!
Thou wert a cadaver for Fate!


[Writ. C. Aug. 91, University of the Philippines Manila]

THOU ART MY BENIGN TALISMAN

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


You sweetest Lady are my benign talisman
A billion bewitching charmers combined
Your Aphroditean countenance makes
The mind-rending world of peoples
A magical Eden alive
No more can poetry fathom
Your limitless charm and glow
You are to me the endless narrative
All epics’ visions fulfilled at last


[Writ. 27 May 91, Quezon City, M.Manila]

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Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Indeed O! sweetest lady
Sweeter still than honey and wine
Whom Dionysos frenzies for delightfully
With whom all men are enthralled by
You gorgeous sight
You are the soothing wave that massages
My tired heart, tired in searching
For you and no one but you

Come forth!
Bring our foreshadowed fusion
To its marvelous close!


[Writ. 27 May 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

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Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Shall we again rendezvous
As the rains and leaves do
To the month of June?

Of what romance are we to partake
When neither of us sees at all
The shadow
Nor hears news and whereabouts
Of one another?

Behold! Walls of time have been built
Between us. The chance of communicating
With one another
Had been buried
In catacombs
Complete with dirges.


[Writ. 27 May 91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

WHERE ARE YOU SWEETEST LADY?

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Where are you, sweetest lady?
Long had passed since my heart’s Cupid beating
For you was at its zenith.
You are a living ghost that appears
Ceaselessly on the panoramic screen
Of my cognitive antechambers.
Do our thoughts and hears still meet
Betwixt undefined time and spaces
Like blended waves of twin satellites
Long cut off from
Their umbilical cords?
Or am I just churning reveries
Of a love flame long deadened
By oblivion’s deoxidizing waters?
Please tarry not the questioning
Or goner would be my fate.


[Writ. 27 May 91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

WHY DO I LOVE YOU SO DEARLY

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Why do I love you so dearly?
As if love were an omnipresent elixir
From the teapots of Eros
Its fading is now next to impossible?
Certainly and o! so certainly because
You’ve been a person unto me who
Never ran out of kindness
Never ran out of reasonableness
Never ran out of sweetness
And so you deserve my love and tenderness.

O! Sweet daughter of the race of Zarathustra!
Behold! I’ve come for you! I am a gift
A present by my forebears Apollo and Dionysos.
I’ve come armed with the edict of my Will—
Evoked is my will to Love!
I am a harbinger of the Shadow—
The benign shadow of Love
That ceaselessly follows you:
It has been anchored in your bosom.

The forces of the Past can’t seem to leave you
Even as the Future now knocks upon your present
But the Past will be incinerated by its own twilight
And the Future gleefully glides before your countenance.
Shudder not with the sight of the Future
You shall find the door to its halls
And I’m the guardian who’d patiently waited for you
I’d lead you to Future’s spaces where we
Shall celebrate our affinity with dances
And fancies.
The Future will be delighted as we’ll dance
Together on its sacred floor
And Love’s the tune that we as ordained
Lovers never can ignore.


[Writ. 20 Jan.’89, U.P. Village, Quezon City, M.Manila]

LOVE’S MURMUR

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago



I hear the murmur of love
Like rattles of tree branches.
It is coming, marching triumphantly
On the ground of eternal merriment.
It seizes me, bless of my wishes,
It its delightful gallows of wonderment.
It’s message clear—“Heed my call!”
To my woman ‘tis selflessly shared.


[Writ. 24 July 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]