WHAT’S THE WORD FOR?

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Restive is my heart, o! sweetest Friend!
Again has it lifted Will and Reason
Astride vortices of waves from beneath
Ocean’s floors: to you it reaches out.
Is your heart not restive too, sweetest Friend?

Wish I in the eternal moment
In the morrows too wish I
That we gift one another with words
Worth the world’s fauna.
Yet what for are words? They need not be
The best chronicler of the sublime messages
Heart longings of any willful person.

Ah! Words, what loathsome bedfellows
Wert they used to mask as can be
The impeccable messages of the Inner Self
In garbled twangs and phantasmagoric abracadabras.
Nay, had can they be for someone
Who wishes ceaselessly to be in illusions entrapped
For the person who refuses to heed the calls
Of Inner Self the true bank of being
For someone who’s being chased by shadows
Dark shadows of indecision.

Indeed what are words for, spoken?
They aren’t the slightest necessaries
For an authentic reader of the vast book—one’s
Inner Self—made calciform in the Outer
One can’t conceal the message in the sphere
Of action the truest ‘word’ beyond the spoken.

Thou and I, readers of the Book
Let us listen, listen to the murmurs
Of our inner selves.
O! Sweetest Friend, heed the call
Of thy Inner Self!

Heed! Heed its call!
Heed it! Its noblest call
‘Tis music in most stately beauty.


[Writ. 22 July 91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

WHAT OUGHT I WRITE AGAIN?

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


What ought I write again
On this blank page in front of me?
Blank is my mind as a clear
Tabularasa: empty is the world, a dot
On its circumscribed face

Without an iota of an image
On its being.
Fertile is the night.
Cockroaches dance gaily to proclaim
So. What now would preoccupy
The mind?

Frigid is the pen. It cannot roll on
To herald the hymns and notes
Fervently brewing deep in the vats
Of my inner space: thoughts have receded
Without the usual romance with the pen.


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