LET ME MEET YOU O! MOTHERLAND!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago



Let me O! Motherland meet you
With warm embrace and sweet solace
On wind and air above you.

I now have grown more than the bud
That I was then some dozens of summers past
Now am I prepared for tougher tasks
As all the carabaos are in your sturdy breast.

Accept my offerings—my brain and brawn
To plowshare for your scions’ nourishment
And lift them up from want and hunger done
By sickening evils wrought by lords of wrath.

Let me with your children sumptuously dine
I have no more than heartfelt words to give
So hopefully this might their souls satiate
So they’d regain states o’ sobriety and power.

Let me O! Motherland! Meet you again
Beneath your oceans, seas and lakes
Benign these blankets are to me so real
In them I’m freshened always as a babe.

Wake me up from slumber o! Motherland!
Let me rise up forever from this boorish state
I’d rise the more to bequeath my love
To your scions with whom I am betrothed
For they make sanguine giants out of ants
Gold are they beyond all spellbound words.

Let me reach out to your scions all, o! Motherland!
Arise shall my voice be so redeeming
To herald what dear Destiny had covenanted
‘Bout greatness that resides in all of them
Let them feel your Bosom thru this voice
That rise shall they therefore the quickest
‘Twards magnificence their wondrous wherefore
O’ this swearword let me not just rescind
To rest in nasty bowels o’ Oblivion
Far off your scions shall arise above the hovels
They’d lighten up your sky as rays they are
Of suns and suns from all yon galaxies
O! Motherland you’re lightened for all times!

Let me go forth in fights o! Motherland
To citadels of wealth and luster of crafts
Learn more from them I’d frame commission
Embankments of mind enriched for your accrual
For you alone, yes you alone o! Motherland!
I bade you not in sadness no not this
But in cheered one sweetened by your flowers
Return shall I, I swear, I dutifully swear
‘Tis heard aboard the melodious winds above you
To be a part of your triumphant enshrinement
In all the world’s magnificent halls of Light.


[Writ. 09 March 92, University of the Philippines Manila]

WHY MOTHERLAND?

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Why ought we call Motherland
The cradle of us loyal citizens?
Why not just call it Land
For the sake of propriety and brevity?
Likewise we shan’t label Fatherland
Each lustrous land of alien conquerors
Who enslaved our forbears in servitude
Over epochs of lamentable tribulations.

A Mother is she who never dares forsake
Her children whom she lovingly nourishes.
And yet all children grow to bid farewell
To the hardships of infantile life
And so to bid farewell as well
To the Mother who soon faces retirement.

Habits of old are hard to die
Like thoughts on Motherland or Fatherland
Even as we’re not overgrown infants
Of a country that professes eternal Motherhood
And neither could we all say farewell
To our benign Land: our Provider.


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