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]
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