JOSE RIZAL'S OTHER POEMS
Florentino's Law:
“Everything is a work-in-progress.”
Foreword
JOSE RIZAL: MOSTLY, A POET
by Alberto Florentino
From the age of 9 until the day he died at 35, Rizal had
always, almost always, been a poet. He was a novelist only
from age 26 with his first novel, Noli Me Tangere. He was a
journalist, pamphleteer, and his many other personas only for
a few years of his brief stint on earth.
He
was a poet fluent in at least two languages: Tagalog and
Spanish. His first poem was in Tagalog (Sa Aking Mga
Kababayan). His last poem was in Spanish (Ultimo Adios). In
between he was a novelist (two novels) in Spanish. As he
roamed the world, he had in his pocket the masterpiece work
of the Tagalog bard, Franciso Balagtas Baltazar.
On
the eve of his execution on Dec. 30, 1896, he wrote a long
poem—unsigned, untitled, undated—on which people
have tacked a redundant title, Ultimo Adios.
Mystery
has always surrounded the time, place and circumstances of
the poem’s creation or composition: how the poet wrote
the poem in his cell unobserved; how it was smuggled out of
his cell by one of his sisters; how it reached his family,
friends and followers; how it was published (in Spanish and
in translations) all over the world from 1897 to today.
On
his last day or hour on earth he wrote down 70 lines, in 14
stanzas, and never made a correction. He was, first and
foremost, a Poet.
Rizal’s
role as a martyr (which began only after the morning of his
execution), as “National Hero” (which was tacked on
him by the Americans, like a sash in a beauty contest in our
time) began in the first decade(s) of the 20th century that
he never lived to see. Among his personas, he was a poet the
longest time, from ca. 1870 to 1896.
Was
he a poet? a good one? a great one? The last poem he wrote:
is it a poem? a good poem? a great poem? How about his two
novels? (ditto)
The
millions of Filipino people, in the last part of the 19th
century, never got to know neither the poet nor his poem(s).
Nor did the Filipino people in the next (20th) century. His
role as national hero, martyr, novelist, scientist, polyglot,
painter, sculptor, ophthalmologist, and a hundred other
personas or roles have always gotten in the way.
His
two novels were seen and read as propaganda, agitprop,
proletarian literature, and today, probably as “new
journalism” before there was such a name. His
valedictory poem was seen as an extended farewell note to his
family.
What
got in the way was that the Filipino people never really
adopted the Spanish language like the other colonies under
Spain. English was proclaimed an “official national
language” with Spanish and Tagalog, and became the
lingua franca of the Filipinos in the 20th century but again
was never adopted as a national language (except by
legislation).
The
Filipino people in the 20th century (except for the last
generation of Spanish-speaking elders) read him and his
novels in translation, by force of law that made the reading
an academic requirement, as was the reading and possession of
them in the last century a crime forbidden by law. The 20th
century Filipino reads him largely in translation.
The
valedictory poem, as well as his other poems, his other
literary works (2 novels), have been read in a wide variety
of translations by a wide range of translators (teachers,
textbook writers, educators, language teachers, poetasters,
and rarely by poets). The novels as translated by Leon Ma.
Guerrero were not the novels translated by Soledad Locsin in
the 90s and different from translations by the American
Charles Derbyshire in the early 30s, and translations into
languages other than English and Tagalog. Some translations
were made by non-Spanish writers who worked on a translation
from Spanish or a translation of another translation.
It
is now the 21st century and the 3rd millennium. The Filipino
Americans in the US (the 3rd or 5th generation) have slowly
grown aware of their historical, cultural, literary roots in
the last decades because of the demand from mainstream
America for a multicultural, bilingual, multilingual
literature that embraces the cultural luggage that the
immigrants in 200 years have brought down the planks of the
Mayflower, through customs at Ellis Island, down the
wheeled-in stairs from the sleek, futuristic British
Concorde.
Lately,
the Filipino Americans in New York and in other parts of the
US discovered—or rediscovered, since he was never
covered or lost—the poet Jose Garcia Villa as poet and
immigrant (although retaining Filipino citizenship) and New
Yorker, Greenwich Villager, as their own.
Soon,
with the death of V.C. Igarta, they will re-discover the
painter who came during the Depression as a young man and
made himself into a painter who became the only Filipino to
have hung a painting (“Northern Philippines”) in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As they earlier
re-discovered Carlos Bulosan.
The
time has come to re-discover Jose Rizal and see him as a poet
and novelist apart from his role as martyr and national hero.
The time has really, finally come.
**************************************************
A digital
edition/reprint:
JOSE RIZAL’S OTHER POEMS**
Translated from the Spanish by NICK
JOAQUIN
Published as
THE SONG OF MARIA CLARA and Other Poems
(translated from the Spanish by NICK JOAQUIN)
in 1969 in Manila, Philippines,
in cooperation with the
National Historical Commission
under director Carmen Guerrero Nakpil,
by ALBERTO S. FLORENTINO, Publisher.
© 1969 by Alberto S. Florentino
Printed by Matagumpay Press
**************************************************
CONTENTS / INDEX
1. To the Philippines
2. To the Philippine
Youth
3. To My Childhood Companions
4. Water and Fire
5. To the Child Jesus
6. A Fragment
7. To the Virgin Mary
8. The New Year
9. Felicitation
10. My First
Inspiration
11. To Josefina
12. To Miss C. O. y
R.
13. Goodbye to
Leonor
14. The Song of
Maria Clara
15. They Ask Me for
Verses!
16. Song of the
Wanderer
17. To the Flowers of
Heidelberg
18. Flower Among Flowers
19. A Tribute to My Town
20. Hymn to Talisay
21. My Retreat
22. To My—
23. Kundiman
**************************************************
JOSE RIZAL’S OTHER POEMS**
Translated from the Spanish by NICK
JOAQUIN
1. TO THE
PHILIPPINES
Warm and beautiful like a houri of yore,
as gracious and as pure as the break of dawn
when darling clouds take on a sapphire tone,
sleeps a goddess on the Indian shore.
The small waves of the sonorous sea assail
her feet with ardent, amorous kisses, while
the intellectual West adores her smile;
and the old hoary Pole, her flower veil.
My Muse, most enthusiastic and elate,
sings to her among naiads and undines;
I offer her my fortune and my fate.
With myrtle, purple roses, and flowering greens
and lilies, crown her brow immaculate,
O artists, and exalt the Philippines!
^
2. TO THE
PHILIPPINE YOUTH
Look up with a tranquil face,
Philippine youth, on this day and shine,
manifesting the grace
and gallantry of your line,
fair hope of this land of mine!
Spirit of grandeur, uplift
and fill them with a noble meditation
that will launch with a force more swift
than the wind’s acceleration
their virgin mind to its glorious destination.
Bearing the good light
of art and science, to the battleground
descend, O youth, and smite:
loosen the heavy pound
of chains that keeps poetic genius bound.
See how the light runs down
the ardent zone where dwelt the shadows; and
how Spain, a splendid crown,
with pious and wise hand,
offers the scion of this Indian land.
You who, questing, rise
upon the wings of your rich fantasy
into Olympian skies
in quest of poetry
more luscious than the food of divinity;
You of the heavenly strain,
a most melodious rival of Philomel,
whose manifold refrain
on still nights audible
dissipates the pain of the human hell;
You who animate
the hard rock with the impulse of intuition
and can perpetuate
with potent hand the vision
of genius, for eternal recognition;
And you whose hand transfers
with magic brushes to a simple board
the robe that nature wears
and the varied beauty stored
in Phoebus, whom divine Apelles adored;
Make haste! The sacred flame
of genius, laureled Glory comes to crown:
while circulating Fame
publishes up and down
the universe a mortal name’s renown.
O happy, happy day
is this, sweet Philippines, to your descent!
Bless the almighty sway
of God, whose love has sent
fortune shining upon you, and content!
^
3. TO MY CHILDHOOD
COMPANIONS
Whenever a people truly love
the language given them from above,
lost freedom will they ever try
to regain, as birds yearn for the sky.
For language is a mandate sent
to each people, country and government;
and every man is, like all free
creation, born to liberty.
Who does not love his own tongue is
far worse than a brute or stinking fish,
for we should foster and make it great
like unto a mother blest by fate.
Like Latin, English, Spanish, or
the speech of angels is Tagalog,
for God, a wise provider, it was
who made and handed it to us.
Like the others, our language was equipped
with its own alphabet, its own script,
which were lost when a storm brought down in woe
the barque on the lake long, long ago.
^
4. WATER AND
FIRE
Water are we, you say, and yourselves fire,
so let us be what we are
and co-exist without ire,
and may no conflagration ever find us at war.
but, rather, fused together by cunning science
within the cauldrons of the ardent breast,
without rage, without defiance,
do we form steam, fifth element indeed:
progress, life, enlightenment, and speed!
^
5. TO THE CHILD
JESUS
Why have you come to earth,
Child-God, in a poor manger?
Does Fortune find you a stranger
from the moment of your birth?
Alas, of heavenly stock
now turned an earthly resident!
Do you not wish to be president
but the shepherd of your flock?
^
6. A FRAGMENT
To my Creator I sing,
to my All-Merciful Lord, the Omnipotent,
who hushed my suffering
and his sweet solace sent
to ease me while in tribulation I went.
You, with authority,
said: Live; and I myself to life came forth;
free will you gave to me
and a soul that must find worth
in goodness, like a compass needle set north.
You willed my birth to be
of honorable parents, a house of honor;
and a country you granted me:
rich, fair to all who won her,
though fortune and prudence may be scarce upon her.
^
7. TO THE VIRGIN
MARY
Mary, sweet peace and dearest consolation
of suffering mortal: you are the fount whence springs
the current of solicitude that brings
unto our soil unceasing fecundation.
From your abode, enthroned on heaven’s height,
in mercy deign to hear my cry of woe
and to the radiance of your mantle draw
my voice that rises with so swift a flight.
You are my mother, Mary, and shall be
my life, my stronghold, my defense most thorough;
and you shall be my guide on this wild sea.
If vice pursues me madly on the morrow,
if death harasses me with agony:
come to my aid and dissipate my sorrow!
^
8. THE NEW YEAR
(A Fragment)
Out of Time’s abyss
and Eternity’s vast cavern,
I rise: I am the New Year.
Now have I come to govern.
^
9. FELICITATION
I
If Philomela with harmonious tongue
To blond Apollo, who manifests his face
Behind high hill or overhanging mountain,
Canticles sends.
II
So we as well, full of a sweet contentment,
Salute you and your very noble saint
With tender music and fraternal measures,
Dear Antonino.
III
From all your sisters and your other kin
Receive most lovingly the loving accent
That the suave warmth of love dictates to them
Placid and tender.
IV
From amorous wife and amiable Emilio
Sweetly receive an unsurpassed affection;
And may its sweetness in disaster soften
The ruder torments.
V
As the sea pilot, who so bravely fought
Tempestuous waters in the dark of night,
Gazes upon his darling vessel safe
And come to port.
VI
So, setting aside all [worldly] predilections,
Now let your eyes be lifted heavenward
To him who is the solace of all men
And loving Father.
VII
And from ourselves that in such loving accents
Salute you everywhere you celebrate,
These clamorous vivas that from the heart resound
Be pleased to accept.
^
10. MY FIRST
INSPIRATON
Why falls so rich a spray
of fragrance from the bowers
of the balmy flowers
upon this festive day?
Why from woods and vales
do we hear sweet measures ringing
that seem to be the singing
of a choir of nightingales?
Why in the grass below
do birds start at the wind’s noises,
unleashing their honeyed voices
as they hop from bough to bough?
Why should the spring that glows
its crystalline murmur be tuning
to the zephyr’s mellow crooning
as among the flowers it flows?
Why seems to me more endearing,
more fair than on other days,
the dawn’s enchanting face
among red clouds appearing?
The reason, dear mother, is
they feast your day of bloom:
the rose with its perfume,
the bird with its harmonies.
And the spring that rings with laughter
upon this joyful day
with its murmur seems to say:
“Live happily ever after!”
And from that spring in the grove
now turn to hear the first note
that from my lute I emote
to the impulse of my love!
^
11. TO JOSEFINA
Josefina, Josefina,
to these shores you came in quest
of a dwelling place, a nest,
like an emigrating swallow;
if your fortune you must follow
to Shanghai, China or Japan,
don’t forget that on these shores
beats for you the heart of one.
^
12. TO MISS C.O. y
R.
Why ask for those unintellectual verses
that once, insane with grief, I sang aghast?
Or are you maybe throwing in my face
my rank ingratitude, my bitter past?
Why resurrect unhappy memories
now when the heart awaits from love a sign,
or call the night when day begins to smile,
not knowing if another day will shine?
You wish to learn the cause of this dejection—
delirium of despair that anguish wove?
You wish to know the wherefore of such sorrows,
and why, a young soul, I sing not of love?
Oh, may you never know why! For the reason
brings melancholy—but may set you laughing.
Down with my corpse into the grave shall go
another corpse that’s buried in my stuffing!
Something impossible, ambition, madness,
dreams of the soul, a passion and its throes …
Oh, drink the nectar that life has to offer
and let the bitter dregs in peace repose!
Again I feel the impenetrable shadows
shrouding the soul with the thick veils of night:
a mere bud only, not a lovely flower,
because it’s destitute of air and light …
Behold them: my poor verses, my damned brood—
and sorrow suckled each and every brat!
Oh, they know well to what they owe their being,
and maybe they themselves will tell you what.
^
13. GOODBYE TO
LEONOR
And so it has arrived—-the fatal instant,
the dismal injunction of my cruel fate;
so it has come at last—-the moment, the date,
when I must separate myself from you.
Goodbye, Leonor, goodbye! I take my leave,
leaving behind with you my lover’s heart!
Goodbye, Leonor: from here I now depart.
O Melancholy absence! Ah, what pain!
^
14. THE SONG OF
MARIA CLARA
Sweet the hours in the native country,
where friendly shines the sun above!
Life is the breeze that sweeps the meadows;
tranquil is death; most tender, love.
Warm kisses on the lips are playing
as we awake to mother’s face:
the arms are seeking to embrace her,
the eyes are smiling as they gaze.
How sweet to die for the native country,
where friendly shines the sun above!
Death is the breeze for him who has
no country, no mother, and no love!
^
15. THEY ASK ME FOR
VERSES!
I
They bid me strike the lyre
so long now mute and broken,
but not a note can I waken
nor will my muse inspire!
She stammers coldly and babbles
when tortured by my mind;
she lies when she laughs and thrills
as she lies in her lamentation,
for in my sad isolation
my soul nor frolics nor feels.
II
There was a time, ‘tis true,
but now that time has vanished
when indulgent love or friendship
called me a poet too.
Now of that time there lingers
hardly a memory,
as from a celebration
some mysterious refrain
that haunts the ears will remain
of the orchestra’s actuation.
III
A scarce-grown plant I seem,
uprooted from the Orient,
where perfume is the atmosphere
and where life is a dream.
O land that is never forgotten!
And these have taught me to sing:
the birds with their melody,
the cataracts with their force
and, on the swollen shores,
the murmuring of the sea.
IV
While in my childhood days
I could smile upon her sunshine,
I felt in my bosom, seething,
a fierce volcano ablaze.
A poet was I, for I wanted
with my verses, with my breath,
to say to the swift wind: “Fly
and propagate her renown!
Praise her from zone to zone,
from the earth up to the sky!”
V
I left her! My native hearth,
a tree despoiled and shriveled,
no longer repeats the echo
of my old songs of mirth.
I sailed across the vast ocean,
craving to change my fate,
not noting, in my madness,
that, instead of the weal I sought,
the sea around me wrought
the spectre of death and sadness.
VI
The dreams of younger hours,
love, enthusiasm, desire,
have been left there under the skies
of that fair land of flowers.
Oh, do not ask of my heart
that languishes, songs of love!
For, as without peace I tread
this desert of no surprises,
I feel that my soul agonizes
and that my spirit is dead.
^
16. SONG OF THE
WANDERER
Dry leaf that flies at random
till it’s seized by a wind from above:
so lives on earth the wanderer,
without north, without soul, without country or love!
Anxious, he seeks joy everywhere
and joy eludes him and flees,
a vain shadow that mocks his yearning
and for which he sails the seas.
Impelled by a hand invisible,
he shall wander from place to place;
memories shall keep him company—
of loved ones, of happy days.
A tomb perhaps in the desert,
a sweet refuge, he shall discover,
by his country and the world forgotten…
Rest quiet: the torment is over.
And they envy the hapless wanderer
as across the earth he persists!
Ah, they know not of the emptiness
in his soul, where no love exists.
The pilgrim shall return to his country,
shall return perhaps to his shore;
and shall find only ice and ruin,
perished loves, and graves—nothing more.
Begone, wanderer! In your own country,
a stranger now and alone!
Let the others sing of loving,
who are happy—but you, begone!
Begone, wanderer! Look not behind you
nor grieve as you leave again.
Begone, wanderer: stifle your sorrows!
the world laughs at another’s pain.
^
17. TO THE FLOWERS OF
HEIDELBERG
Go to my country, go, O foreign flowers,
sown by the traveler along the road,
and under that blue heaven
that watches over my loved ones,
recount the devotion
the pilgrim nurses for his native sod!
Go and say … say that when dawn
opened your chalices for the first time
beside the icy Neckar,
you saw him silent beside you,
thinking of her constant vernal clime.
Say that when dawn
which steals your aroma
was whispering playful love songs to your young
sweet petals, he, too, murmured
canticles of love in his native tongue;
that in the morning when the sun first traces
the topmost peak of Koenigssthul in gold
and with a mild warmth raises
to life again the valley, the glade, the forest,
he hails that sun, still in its dawning,
that in his country in full zenith blazes.
And tell of that day
when he collected you along the way
among the ruins of a feudal castle,
on the banks of the Neckar, or in a forest nook.
Recount the words he said
as, with great care,
between the pages of a worn-out book
he pressed the flexible petals that he took.
Carry, carry, O flowers,
my love to my loved ones,
peace to my country and its fecund loam,
faith to its men and virtue to its women,
health to the gracious beings
that dwell within the sacred paternal home.
When you reach that shore,
deposit the kiss I gave you
on the wings of the wind above
that with the wind it may rove
and I may kiss all that I worship, honor and love!
But O you will arrive there, flowers,
and you will keep perhaps your vivid hues;
but far from your native heroic earth
to which you owe your life and worth,
your fragrances you will lose!
For fragrance is a spirit that never can forsake
and never forgets the sky that saw its birth.
^
18. FLOWERS AMONG FLOWERS
Flower among flowers,
soft bud swooning,
that the wind moves
to a gentle crooning.
Wind of heaven,
wind of love,
you who gladden
all you espy;
you who smile
and will not sigh,
candour and fragrance
from above;
you who perhaps
came down to earth
to bring the lonely
solace and mirth,
and to be a joy
for the heart to capture.
They say that into
your dawn you bear
the immaculate soul
a prisoner
—bound with the ties of
passion and rapture?
They say you spread
good everywhere
like the Spring
which fills the air
with joy and flowers
in Apriltime.
They say you brighten
the soul that mourns
when dark clouds gather,
and that without thorns
blossom the roses
in your clime.
If then, like a fairy,
you enhance
the joy of those
on whom you glance
with the magic charm
God gave to you;
oh, spare me an hour
of your cheer,
a single day
of your career,
that the breast may savor
the bliss it knew!
^
19. A TRIBUTE TO MY TOWN
When I remember the days
that saw my early childhood
spent on the green shores
of a murmurous lagoon;
when I remember the coolness,
delicious and refreshing,
that on my face I felt
as I heard Favonius croon;
when I behold the white lily
swell to the wind’s impulsion,
and that tempestuous element
meekly asleep on the sand;
when I inhale the dear
intoxicating essence
the flowers exude when dawn
is smiling on the land;
sadly, sadly I recall
your visage, precious childhood,
which an affectionate mother
made beautiful and bright;
I recall a simple town,
my comfort, joy and cradle,
beside a balmy lake,
the seat of my delight.
Ah, yes, my awkward foot
explored your sombre woodlands,
and on the banks of your rivers
in frolic I took part.
I prayed in your rustic temple,
a child, with a child’s devotion;
and your unsullied breeze
exhilarated my heart.
The Creator I saw in the grandeur
of your age-old forests;
upon your bosom, sorrows
were ever unknown to me;
while at your azure skies
I gazed, neither love nor tenderness
failed me, for in nature
lay my felicity.
Tender childhood, beautiful town,
rich fountain of rejoicing
and of harmonious music
that drove away all pain:
return to this heart of mine,
return my gracious hours,
return as the birds return
when flowers spring again!
But O goodbye! May the Spirit
of Good, a loving gift-giver,
keep watch eternally over
your peace, your joy, your sleep!
For you, my fervent pryers;
for you, my constant desire
to learn; and I pray heaven
your innocence to keep!
^
20. HYMN TO TALISAY
Hail, Talisay,
firm and faithful,
ever forward
march elate!
You, victorious,
the elements
—land, sea and air—
shall dominate!
The sandy beach of Dapitan
and the rocks of its lofty mountain
are your throne. O sacred asylum
where I passed my childhood days!
In your valley covered with flowers
and shaded by fruitful orchards,
our minds received their formation,
both body and soul, by your grace.
We are children, children born late,
but our spirits are fresh and healthy;
strong men shall we be tomorrow
that can guard a family right.
We are children that nothing frightens,
not the waves, nor the storm, nor the thunder;
the arm ready, the young face tranquil,
in a fix we shall know how to fight.
We ransack the sand in our frolic;
through the caves and the thickets we ramble;
our houses are built upon rocks;
our arms reach far and wide.
No darkness, and no dark night,
that we fear, no savage tempest;
if the devil himself comes forward,
we shall catch him, dead or alive!
Talisayon, the people call us:
a great soul in a little body;
in Dapitan and all its region
Talisay has no match!
Our reservoir is unequalled;
our precipice is a deep chasm;
and when we go rowing, our bancas
no banca in the world can catch!
We study the problems of science
and the history of the nation.
We speak some three or four languages;
faith and reason we span.
Our hands can wield at the same time
the knife, the pen and the spade,
the picket, the rifle, the sword—
companions of a brave man.
Long live luxuriant Talisay!
Our voices exalt you in chorus,
clear star, dear treasure of childhood,
a childhood you guide and please.
In the struggles that await the grown man,
subject to pain and sorrow,
your memory shall be his amulet;
snd your name, in the tomb, his peace.
^
21. MY RETREAT
Beside a spacious beach of fine and delicate sand
and at the foot of a mountain greener than a leaf,
I planted my humble hut beneath a pleasant orchard,
seeking in the still serenity of the woods
repose to my intellect and silence to my grief.
Its roof is fragile nipa; its floor is brittle bamboo;
its beams and posts are rough as rough-hewn wood can be;
of no worth, it is certain, is my rustic cabin;
but on the lap of the eternal mount it slumbers
and night and day is lulled by the crooning of the sea.
The overflowing brook, that from the shadowy jungle
descends between huge bowlders, washes it with its spray,
donating a current of water through makeshift bamboo pipes
that in the silent night is melody and music
and crystalline nectar in the noon heat of the day.
If the sky is serene, meekly flows the spring,
strumming on its invisible zither unceasingly;
but come the time of the rains, and an impetuous torrent
spills over rocks and chasms—hoarse, foaming and
aboil—
to hurl itself with a frenzied roaring toward the sea.
The barking of the dog, the twittering of the birds,
the hoarse voice of the kalaw are all that I hear;
there is no boastful man, no nuisance of a neighbor
to impose himself on my mind or to disturb my passage;
only the forests and the sea do I have near.
The sea, the sea is everything! Its sovereign mass
brings to me atoms of a myriad faraway lands;
its bright smile animates me in the limpid mornings;
and when at the end of day my faith has proven futile,
my heart echoes the sound of its sorrow on the sands.
At night it is a mystery! … Its diaphanous element
is carpeted with thousands and thousands of lights that
climb;
the wandering breeze is cool, the firmament is brilliant,
the waves narrate with many a sigh to the mild wind
histories that were lost in the dark night of time.
‘Tis said they tell of the first morning on the earth,
of the first kiss with which the sun inflamed her breast,
when multitudes of beings materialized from nothing
to populate the abyss and the overhanging summits
and all the places where that quickening kiss was pressed.
But when the winds rage in the darkness of the night
and the unquiet waves commence their agony,
across the air move cries that terrify the spirit,
a chorus of voices praying, a lamentation that seems
to come from those who, long ago, drowned in the sea.
Then do the mountain ranges on high reverberate;
the trees stir far and wide, by a fit of trembling seized;
the cattle moan; the dark depths of the forest resound;
their spirits say that they are on their way to the plain,
summoned by the dead to a mortuary feast.
The wild night hisses, hisses, confused and terrifying;
one sees the sea afire with flames of green and blue;
but calm is re-established with the approach of dawning
and forthwith an intrepid little fishing vessel
begins to navigate the weary waves anew.
So pass the days of my life in my obscure retreat;
cast out of the world where once I dwelt: such is my rare
good fortune; and Providence be praised for my condition:
a disregarded pebble that craves nothing but moss
to hide from all the treasure that in myself I bear.
I live with the remembrance of those that I have loved
and hear their names still spoken, who haunt my memory;
some already are dead, others have long forgotten—
but what does it matter? I live remembering the past
and no one can ever take the past away from me.
It is my faithful friend that never turns against me,
that cheers my spirit when my spirit’s a lonesome
wraith,
that in my sleepless nights keeps watch with me and prays
with me, and shares with me my exile and my cabin,
and, when all doubt, alone infuses me with faith.
Faith do I have, and I believe the day will shine
when the Idea shall defeat brute force as well;
and after the struggle and the lingering agony
a voice more eloquent and happier than my own
will then know how to utter victory’s canticle.
I see the heavens shining, as flawless and refulgent
as in the days that saw my first illusions start;
I feel the same breeze kissing my autumnal brow,
the same that once enkindled my fervent enthusiasm
and turned the blood ebullient within my youthful heart.
Across the fields and rivers of my native town
perhaps has travelled the breeze that now I breathe by
chance;
perhaps it will give back to me what once I gave it:
the sighs and kisses of a person idolized
and the sweet secrets of a virginal romance.
On seeing the same moon, as silvery as before,
I feel within me the ancient melancholy revive;
a thousand memories of love and vows awaken:
a patio, an azotea, a beach, a leafy bower;
silences and sighs, and blushes of delight …
A butterfly athirst for radiances and colors,
dreaming of other skies and of a larger strife,
I left, scarcely a youth, my land and my affections,
and vagrant eveywhere, with no qualms, with no terrors,
squandered in foreign lands the April of my life.
And afterwards, when I desired, a weary swallow,
to go back to the nest of those for whom I care,
suddenly fiercely roared a violent hurricane
and I found my wings broken, my dwelling place demolished,
faith now sold to others, and ruins everywhere.
Hurled upon a rock of the country I adore;
the future ruined; no home, no health to bring me cheer;
you come to me anew, dreams of rose and gold,
of my entire existence the solitary treasure,
convictions of a youth that was healthy and sincere.
No more are you, like once, full of fire and life,
offering a thousand crowns to immortality;
somewhat serious I find you; and yet your face beloved,
if now no longer as merry, if now no longer as vivid,
now bear the superscription of fidelity.
You offer me, O illusions, the cup of consolation;
you come to reawaken the years of youthful mirth;
hurricane, I thank you; winds of heaven, I thank you
that in good hour suspended by uncertain flight
to bring me down to the bosom of my native earth.
Beside a spacious beach of fine and delicate sand
and at the foot of a mountain greener than a leaf,
I found in my land a refuge under a pleasant orchard,
and in its shadowy forests, serene tranquility,
repose to my intellect and silence to my grief.
^
22. TO MY—
No more is the muse invoked;
the lyre is out of fashion;
no poet cares to use it;
by other things are the dreamy
young inspired to passion.
Now if imagination
demands some poesies,
no Helicon is invoked;
one simply asks the garçon
for a cup of coffee please.
Instead of tender stanzas
that move the heart’s sympathy,
one now writes a poem
with a pen of steel,
a joke and an irony.
Muse that in the past
inspired me to sing of the throes
of love: go and repose.
What I need is a sword,
rivers of gold, and acrid prose.
I have a need to reason,
to meditate, to offer
combat, sometimes to weep;
for he who would love much
has also much to suffer.
Gone are the days of peace,
the days of love’s gay chorus,
when the flowers were enough
to alleviate the soul
of its sufferings and sorrows.
One by one from my side
go those I loved so much:
this one dead, that one married;
for fate seals with disaster
everything that I touch.
Flee also, muse! Go forth
and seek a region more fine,
for my country vows to give you
fetters for your laurels,
a dark jail for your shrine.
If to suppress the truth
be a shame, an impiety,
would it not then be madness
to keep you by my side
deprived of liberty?
Why sing when destiny calls
to serious meditation,
when a hurricane is roaring,
when to her sons complains
the Filipino nation?
And why sing if my song
will merely resound with a moaning
that will arouse no one,
the world being sick and tired
of someone else’s groaning?
For what, when among the people
who criticize and maltreat me,
arid the soul, the lips frigid,
there’s not a heart that beats
with mine, no heart to meet me?
Let sleep in the depths of oblivion
all that I feel, for there
it well should be, where the breath
cannot mix it with a rhyme
that evaporates in the air.
As sleep in the deep abyss
the monsters of the sea,
so let my tribulations,
my fancies and my lyrics
slumber, buried in me.
I know well that your favors
you lavish without measure
only during that time
of flowers and first loves
unclouded by displeasure.
Many years have passed
since with the ardent heat
of a kiss you burned my brow …
That kiss has now turned cold,
I have even forgotten it!
But, before departing, say
that to your sublime address
ever responded in me
a song for those who grieve
and a challenge for those who oppress.
But, sacred imagination, once again
to warm my fantasy you will come nigh
when, faith being faded, broken the sword,
I cannot for my country die.
You’ll give me the mourning zither whose
chords vibrate with elegiac strains
to sweeten the sorrows of my nation
and muffle the clanking of her chains.
But if with laurel triumph crowns
our efforts, and my country, united,
like a queen of the East arises,
a white pearl rescued from the sty:
return then and intone with vigor
the sacred hymn of a new existence,
and we shall sing that strain in chorus
though in the sepulcher we lie.
^
23. KUNDIMAN
Now mute indeed are tongue and heart:
love shies away, joy stands apart.
Neglected by its leaders and defeated,
the country was subdued and it submitted.
But O the sun will shine again!
Itself the land shall disenchain;
and once more round the world with growing praise
shall sound the name of the Tagalog race.
We shall pour out our blood in a gread flood
to liberate the parent sod;
but till that day arrives for which we weep,
love shall be mute, desire shall sleep.
^
