EMBLEM OF THE DUST

EMBLEM OF THE DUST

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


I am but the emblem of the dust
Blown smoothly away by the wind.

Born from out of the dust
Where rests the cosmic elements
Over a century known in all;
Nurtured within the womb of Terra
Mother of all Mothers;
Delivered as seed by Firmament’s demiurgos
The ultima pater noster;
So was I born, a dust.

Chartered was my life through sojourns
By my Self
Betwixt worlds
Of shadows and sunlit dales
I the dust, I the crafter.
Molded was I so exquisitely humane
Betwixt cast of the hardest metals
Harder than Bernardo Carpio’s will
Was I nurtured out extruded
I am my own furnace, my dust I am.

Founded was I a warrior
Crafted in the trade of the blade
Whose countenance is blanketed with Courage
A most scarce diadem;
Bear I the Will to thrust the majestic sword
Unto the fleshy morsels of obstacles
Conceived by Existence, Uncertainty, Death
That I rise, am I arisen
I a dust, yet a Warrior.

Blown forth am I the dust
Blown forth by my own Will
Astride winds sunbeams waters
Ne’er fixed and transfixed neither
By mischievous forces of diabolical climes
Now dust am I, my Will wind
‘Tis my starship to galactic
Worlds of humans.

What has come to pass in my biographic trails?
My Past and Future, of what constructs made of?
They I’ve myself made
I the baker who’s always been attending
To chores of my oven’s commands
I’ve had my whereabouts made
Even as Future and Past cancel out
In the nothingness of the Omnipresent Present:
Time is but non-Time altogether
A leaf that has crumpled in its own face
‘Tis but a premise of one who’s never lived
So is it a pest that distracts awhile
And later fornicates in its death traps.
What’s the most illustriously true
But that I the dust was ever present
In time as time to me was spent a-non
I therefore live forever.

I’d gazed at the celestial mirror
And glanced at Eternal Thou
Or was it? Eternal Thou? What’s it?
A chimera derived from my own image?
An extract from the prurient I?
Or is it the whole Kosmos focused
In the magnificent galactic lens so said?
O! Kosmos! O! Nature! You are Eternal!
Am I Thou?
Please whisper the answer softly
In my ear
Amid the hypnotic melodies
Of the celestial music…
I so earnestly await thy response!


Wherefore the dust shall have gone forth
In the tapestries and gourdian knots of Nature
To be a part of and yet not
Of elements among whom it had immersed
As the Ego does to the countless Alters
It “Is” now and yet “Is Not”
A concrete now and yet a phantom as well
The moving and the rested wedded together
It is, it is such, it is
For and only for it to scale altitudes
To where it fuses with the bounds of its source
It is the changeling, the changeling
That dons the matterly cloak: the Kosmos
Of which it Is:
The Iota and the Whole are One.
Henceforth shall it have known
The All and the Self
Finale regal of its sacred mission.

That I am: the dust
Caringly blown away by the wind.


[Writ. 19 Feb. ‘92, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

FAREWELL TO ACADEMIA

FAREWELL TO ACADEMIA

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago



The time, yes the time has come
For me to say farewell to you o! Academe
I’d again face the hostile world outside
Where rapacious Existence devours its gullible prey.

How gently comforting are you o! Academe!
A supreme shelter against diabolic boulders spewed
By the volcanic raptures of a putrescent world.
You are the soft bed where I’d laid
My tired body, tired from sojourns aplenty
You are the stars and moons joined together
That illuminated the nights of my life’s first half
You are the magical stove that patiently cooked
The ideas harvesting from my ever-searching mind
You are the resting stations all in all
In the Calvaries and Golgothas of my life.

Why depart I now that in you I am in bliss
Clearly because I’d been fated by history and self
To entrench my soul in humanity’s bosom
Share in the extirpation of malignant social ailments
Rooted in sorceries of injustices and imperial lust
They that had mired people in fecals and hovels.
Thereof I go forth, the molded warrior-poet
To thrust once more my blades against historic demons.

What words have I to say my gratitudes
These I can’t but feel them from my heart
I know that off your walls you are my trusted pal
Whom I will caringly long for in the morrows
Rest assured thus I bade farewell in full comfort.


[Writ. 16 Feb. 92, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

THE GREAT RETURN

THE GREAT RETURN

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


That which was
Lost may not be lost
‘tis but slumbering in its bed
Beneath its epithelial chambers.

Soon shall it wake up
To conquer its sleeping state.
Soon shall it triumphantly march
To possess the majestic estate bequeathed to it.
Soonest that it triumphs its tremolo of voice
As herald of its presence in the here-and-now

It has come again.

Nay, it shall stay.


[Writ. 15 Feb. 1992, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

THE PROMISE

THE PROMISE

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


I

Rise up, Man! Rise up!
Your commonwealth’s history had been astride
The cosmic pendulum that had darted
From yon up. Pendulum has reached dead center
And again is rising beyond the dale of time.
The center was lodged betwixt camel and palm tree.

Reckon, reckon that the East calls
‘Twain the valley of time expectant.
Respond shall the camel benignly
And twill change hands with the carabao.

Snail paced is this beast the carabao
And so is your ascent, o! Man!
To the pinnacle of your godly, godly zen.
You shall be god, your being’s made
By you a living clay molded
Millions of times by your own hands.

II

Man! The Light has come forth
In dazzling photons it fused with seawaves
And fluvial ripples. Gracefully had
It landed, guided by a dozen eagles.

Shine brightly shall the Light
Sky beacon that illuminates eagerness
The clear landscape of the Promise.
The Promise has been slumbering in a bed
Of coal and gold: ‘tis coal and gold.

The Light shall burn the coal
To be fed into the waiting furnace
Where the gold shall be molded into one
Magnificent icon as tall as the azure sky.
‘Tis the longed for icon that shall herald
The historic swing to grandeur’s height.

III

Wherefore lies the heart of grandeur?
Wert this not but a dead man’s wish
Long buried in the hovels of the earth?
Wert this not but a sweetened piece
Of bitter gourd: its stinging taste betrays
Its endless senselessness in the world sensical?

Man! This height of grandeur is the state
Indescribable to the wisest among grandfathers
A million generations stretch: ‘tis a million
Times a million times of pure majestic luster
Only but Inner Selves can comprehend.

‘tis the founded form-being of all
Sublime inner selves that have been struggling
In putrescent marshes of history.
This to the grandfathers is mere dream
Induced by the spirit elixirs of Bacchus.

IV

Rise! Rise it shall
High above the hills and valleys
‘Twards the azure firmaments
This majestic commonwealth of yours, o! Man!
For which freedom-in-life is
A concluded spell of benevolent magis.
Reside shall its spirit in people’s bosoms.

Gone shall be the seismic struggles
Alone for bread as if this were the most
Valued diadem atop the zenith of greatness:
The world shall be its own bread
And man, the luminary figure at last
Whose coming was pronounced before
By a trillion bards of eagles and doves.

Rise! Rise it shal
From where corals had made lands
Where sturdy races have eked out living
And slave they were for others;
No more are they slaves but are free cranes
Atop carabaos their benign carriers.

V

What is reality after all o! Man!
For which you have buried yourself
Millions of times in search for its enigmas?
Is it like spiral moving poles a-clashing?
Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe
‘Tis a swarm of flies that swats
Made festive killings by the dozens
And yet aren’t flies but gems.

When upon each gem Light gently touches
It brings forth radiance to all
Corners of the cosmos: it makes bounds
Anon betwixt its grounded state
And the unbrimmed infinite extent
Apast spaces: ‘tis unbrimmed space
And yet spaceless brims.

VI

Man! A promise made a million times
And delivered a million times makes a million
More than its primeval state: ‘ts a grain
Of sand and the universe made one.
The sea has recognized this secret lore
And had sung it lyrically in melodious tunes
That no one cared to listen to

Save for man-slaves on a dozen mountains.
Mushroom-eaters they are who’d sensed
What the real is: the Promise realized overboard
Its primordial state—a giant that wakes up
From zillions of earth revolutions or slumber:
‘Ti a Being stronger than ever that turns rivers
Into founts of gold, cause for merriment
Atop the nature-world the bed of bread.

VII

Happy, o! happy will be
The suns and stars and moons
And winds and waves

Over your final dawning, o! Man!
Even as the day starts on the sixth hour.

Man! You are the sixth estate:
Risen and made one, freed at last
From tsunamis of disintegrating forces.

Behold! No more forlorn are nature and cosmos
The citadels of true life.
And you, Man, finally regained, revived,
Realized as your guardian and maker.


[Writ. 22 July 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

WHAT’S THE WORD FOR?

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]

PINATUBO MOUNT OF TRIUMPH

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]

HERALD MY LADY COMING O! MORNING SUN!

HERALD MY LADY COMING O! MORNING SUN!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Tell me O! morning Sun, tell me
What destiny has providenced for every man?
What meaning too behind the arching mills
Of fate whose noble architect humans are?
What more fate in store?
What more treks to traverse?
What further joys to delight in?
What further sorrows to bear?

When knocks again Eros upon my heart
Is this the ultimate hour for the waiting
For her the lovely woman
Foretold a myriad times in dreams?
Foretold too by well-meaning seers?
She, the sporter of the long flowing hair
A-flashed her sight is beneath my mental screens?
She a wondrous damsel though in pains
Conceiver of my first born scion?

So let it be O! Sun! So be it
I wait no more for this foretold of old
Fulfilled shall be my being in her
Fulfilled more as mount of Light I am
With life a-nurtured as will
She be with me.

[Writ. 25 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]