Songs of War Patriots
By Tomasito T. Talledo
Posted by Bulatlat
I.
Hear from us what is poetry
It’s the ashes of dead comrades,
Sounds of arms in howling plains
For
When verses are camaraderie –
Of people and fighters in soldiery
Then death awards sublime beauty
To us
An encounter with the enemy is poetry.
When scaling the mountain’s skull
We drink danger heartily
So sweetly
We march where our bodies may fall,
Poetry is an encounter with the enemy.
II.
Visitors in hive of earthen women
We grieve
For wombs dried, emptied and barren
Of sires slaughtered in struggles
Of sons swallowed in battles.
Whisperers however exult this war
Perfumed with blood of warriors
We are
Who vowed to vanquish twilight idols
That feed on our noble seeds.
Listen now
Though false heroes salve our silenced
scars
Still we resist alien anthems and elect
To cuddle ancestral guns in secret hive
Of earthen women moaning our periled oath.
III.
Mother’s trembling lips speak the news,
“We are in the state of war,
no more time for supplication
but courage to meet most
honest death.”
Our folks quietly steeled themselves.
“We march with our wounded woes,”
daughters cried.
Among sons who lost their father’s lonely
eyes
Whet our oaths to cut down coming
enemies.
Without bourgeois romance with nullity,
The poets built the longest barricades.
Since there are no more lusts to confess,
Neither lies nor cowardice to publish.
Struck the noon hour of our
Exultation
With the widows and the hills we gird
Ourselves to receive the full flowering
Of the Songs of the War Patriots.
Posted by Bulatlat
*Nota bene:
This is the final
poetic version; an early draft was published in Diliman Review years ago.
Tomasito T. Talledo is
a Social Science faculty member of the University of the Philippines in
the Visayas, Miag-ao Campus and also a member of CONTEND-UP.
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