The water-clock marks the hour in the Tachung sz’, in the Tower of the Great Bell: now the mallet is lifted to smite the lips of the metal monster—the vast lips inscribed with Buddhist texts from the sacred Fa-hwa-King, from the chapters of the holy Ling-yen-King! Hear the great bell responding!—how mighty her voice, though tongueless! KO-NGAI! All the little dragons on the high-tilted eaves of the green roofs shiver to the tips of their gilded tails under that deep wave of sound; all the porcelain gargoyles tremble on their carven perches; all the hundred little bells of the pagodas quiver with desire to speak. KO-NGAI—all the green-and-gold tiles of the temple are vibrating; the wooden goldfish above them are writhing against the sky; the uplifted finger of Fo shakes high over the heads of the worshippers through the blue fog of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone was that! All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle their fire-coloured tongues! And after each huge shock, how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden moan, and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of silver, as though a woman should whisper, “Hiai!” Even so the great bell hath sounded every day for well-nigh five hundred years—Ko-Ngai: first with stupendous clang, then with immeasurable moan of gold, then with silver murmuring of “Hiai!” And there is not a child in all the many-coloured ways of the old Chinese city who does not know the story of the great bell, who cannot tell you why the great bell says Ko-Ngai and Hiai!
Now this is the story of the great bell in the Tachung sz’, as the same is related in the Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue, written by the learned Yu-Pao-Tchen, of the City of Kwang-tchau-fu.
Nearly five hundred years ago the Celestially August, the Son of Heaven, Yong-Lo, of the “Illustrious” or Ming dynasty, commanded the worthy official Kouan-Yu that he should have a bell made of such size that the sound thereof might be heard for one hundred li. And he further ordained that the voice of the bell should be strengthened with brass, and deepened with gold, and sweetened with silver; and that the face and the great lips of it should be graven with blessed sayings from the sacred books, and that it should be suspended in the centre of the imperial capital to sound through all the many-coloured ways of the City of Pe-King.
Therefore the worthy mandarin Kouan-Yu assembled the master-moulders and the renowned bellsmiths of the empire, and all men of great repute and cunning in foundry work; and they measured the materials for the alloy, and treated them skilfully, and prepared the moulds, the fires, the instruments, and the monstrous melting-pot for fusing the metal. And they laboured exceedingly, like giants neglecting only rest and sleep and the comforts of life; toiling both night and day in obedience to Kouan-Yu, and striving in all things to do the behest of the Son of Heaven.
But when the metal had been cast, and the earthen mould separated from the glowing casting, it was discovered that, despite their great labour and ceaseless care, the result was void of worth; for the metals had rebelled one against the other—the gold had scorned alliance with the brass, the silver would not mingle with the molten iron. Therefore the moulds had to be once more prepared, and the fires rekindled, and the metal remelted, and all the work tediously and toilsomely repeated. The Son of Heaven heard and was angry, but spake nothing.
A second time the bell was cast, and the result was even worse. Still the metals obstinately refused to blend one with the other; and there was no uniformity in the bell, and the sides of it were cracked and fissured, and the lips of it were slagged and split asunder; so that all the labour had to be repeated even a third time, to the great dismay of Kouan-Yu. And when the Son of Heaven heard these things, he was angrier than before; and sent his messenger to Kouan-Yu with a letter, written upon lemon-coloured silk and sealed with the seal of the dragon, containing these words:
“From the Mighty Young-Lo, the Sublime Tait-Sung, the Celestial and August, whose reign is called ‘Ming,’ to Kouan-Yu the Fuh-yin: Twice thou hast betrayed the trust we have deigned graciously to place in thee; if thou fail a third time in fulfilling our command, thy head shall be severed from thy neck. Tremble, and obey!”
Now, Kouan-Yu had a daughter of dazzling loveliness whose name—Ko-Ngai—was ever in the mouths of poets, and whose heart was even more beautiful than her face. Ko-Ngai loved her father with such love that she had refused a hundred worthy suitors rather than make his home desolate by her absence; and when she had seen the awful yellow missive, sealed with the Dragon-Seal, she fainted away with fear for her father’s sake. And when her senses and her strength returned to her, she could not rest or sleep for thinking of her parent’s danger, until she had secretly sold some of her jewels, and with the money so obtained had hastened to an astrologer, and paid him a great price to advise her by what means her father might be saved from the peril impending over him. So the astrologer made observations of the heavens, and marked the aspect of the Silver Stream (which we call the Milky Way), and examined the signs of the Zodiac—the Hwang-tao, or Yellow Road—and consulted the table of the Five Hin, or Principles of the Universe, and the mystical books of the alchemists. And after a long silence, he made answer to her, saying: “Gold and brass will never meet in wedlock, silver and iron never will embrace, until the flesh of a maiden be melted in the crucible; until the blood of a virgin be mixed with the metals in their fusion.” So Ko-Ngai returned home sorrowful at heart; but she kept secret all that she had heard, and told no one what she had done.
At last came the awful day when the third and last effort to cast the great bell was to be made; and Ko-Ngai, together with her waiting-woman, accompanied her father to the foundry, and they took their places upon a platform overlooking the toiling of the moulders and the lava of liquefied metal. All the workmen wrought at their tasks in silence; there was no sound heard but the muttering of the fires. And the muttering deepened into a roar like the roar of typhoons approaching, and the blood-red lake of metal slowly brightened like the vermilion of a sunrise, and the vermilion was transmuted into a radiant glow of gold, and the gold whitened blindingly, like the silver face of a full moon. Then the workers ceased to feed the raving flame, and all fixed their eyes upon the eyes of Kouan-Yu; and Kouan-Yu prepared to give the signal to cast.
But ere ever he lifted his finger, a cry caused him to turn his head and all heard the voice of Ko-Ngai sounding sharply sweet as a bird’s song above the great thunder of the fires—“For thy sake, O my father!” And even as she cried, she leaped into the white flood of metal; and the lava of the furnace roared to receive her, and spattered monstrous flakes of flame to the roof, and burst over the verge of the earthen crater, and cast up a whirling fountain of many-coloured fires, and subsided quakingly, with lightnings and with thunders and with mutterings.
Then the father of Ko-Ngai, wild with his grief, would have leaped in after her, but that strong men held him back and kept firm grasp upon him until he had fainted away, and they could bear him like one dead to his home. And the serving-woman of Ko-Ngai, dizzy and speechless for pain, stood before the furnace, still holding in her hands a shoe, a tiny, dainty shoe, with embroidery of pearls and flowers—the shoe of her beautiful mistress that was. For she had sought to grasp Ko-Ngai by the foot as she leaped, but had only been able to clutch the shoe, and the pretty shoe came off in her hand; and she continued to stare at it like one gone mad.
But in spite of all these things, the command of the Celestial and August had to be obeyed, and the work of the moulders to be finished, hopeless as the result might be. Yet the glow of the metal seemed purer and whiter than before; and there was no sign of the beautiful body that had been entombed therein. So the ponderous casting was made; and lo! when the metal had become cool, it was found that the bell was beautiful to look upon and perfect in form, and wonderful in colour above all other bells. Nor was there any trace found of the body of Ko-Ngai; for it had been totally absorbed by the precious alloy, and blended with the well-blended brass and gold, with the intermingling of the silver and the iron. And when they sounded the bell, its tones were found to be deeper and mellower and mightier than the tones of any other bell, reaching even beyond the distance of one hundred li, like a pealing of summer thunder; and yet also like some vast voice uttering a name, a woman’s name, the name of Ko-Ngai.
And still, between each mighty stroke there is a long low moaning heard; and ever the moaning ends with a sound of sobbing and of complaining, as though a weeping woman should murmur, “Hiai!” And still, when the people hear that great golden moan they keep silence, but when the sharp, sweet shuddering comes in the air, and the sobbing of “Hiai!” then, indeed, do all the Chinese mothers in all the many-coloured ways of Pe-King whisper to their little ones: “Listen! that is Ko-Ngai crying for her shoe! That is Ko-Ngai calling for her shoe!”
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife by Manuel Arguilla
She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth.
"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.
I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."
She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily.
My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.
"Maria---" my brother Leon said.
He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.
"Yes, Noel."
Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way.
"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.
She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly.
"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"
Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.
We stood alone on the roadside.
The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.
He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer.
"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.
"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."
"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."
She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek.
"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous."
My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.
I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top.
She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away.
"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.
She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.
"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.
I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow fires.
When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly:
"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"
His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.
"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"
His fingers bit into my shoulder.
"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."
Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:
"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."
Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"
I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.
"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.
"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"
"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."
"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."
"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.
"Making fun of me, Maria?"
She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face.
I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels.
"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant.
Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.
"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.
"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."
"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.
Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:
"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."
"So near already."
I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.
Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes.
"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.
"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing.
"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."
With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.
"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."
"Noel," she said.
"Yes, Maria."
"I am afraid. He may not like me."
"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."
We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.
I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were:
"Father... where is he?"
"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."
I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.
There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.
"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.
"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."
He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.
"She is very beautiful, Father."
"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.
"No, Father, she was not afraid."
"On the way---"
"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."
"What did he sing?"
"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."
He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside.
The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.
"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.
I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.
"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.
I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.
"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.
I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."
She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily.
My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.
"Maria---" my brother Leon said.
He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.
"Yes, Noel."
Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way.
"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.
She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly.
"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"
Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.
We stood alone on the roadside.
The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.
He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer.
"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.
"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."
"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."
She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek.
"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous."
My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.
I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top.
She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away.
"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.
She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.
"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.
I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow fires.
When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly:
"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"
His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.
"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"
His fingers bit into my shoulder.
"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."
Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:
"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."
Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"
I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.
"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.
"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"
"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."
"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."
"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.
"Making fun of me, Maria?"
She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face.
I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels.
"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant.
Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.
"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.
"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."
"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.
Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:
"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."
"So near already."
I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.
Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes.
"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.
"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing.
"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."
With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.
"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."
"Noel," she said.
"Yes, Maria."
"I am afraid. He may not like me."
"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."
We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.
I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were:
"Father... where is he?"
"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."
I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.
There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.
"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.
"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."
He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.
"She is very beautiful, Father."
"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.
"No, Father, she was not afraid."
"On the way---"
"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."
"What did he sing?"
"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."
He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside.
The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.
"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.
I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.
"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.
I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.
Air Castles by Juan Salazar
My life's tommorow beckons me
From distant mountains, high and low;
My future seems a boundless sea,
Where moving passions come and go.
Deep in my heart ambitions dwells;
He cheers me up the highland,
And guides me through the hills and dells
Wherein I pass the busy day.
I cannot write with Shakespeare's pen,
But I can love with Shakespeare's heart;
I love his skill his craft of men,
His mastery of poet's art.
I do not care for fame, has he,
Enthroned, was like unto a god:
The depths he reached are dark to me.
But I will grope the ways he tried.
I wear achievement’s coronet,
For best are they who see things done!
And all my cares I soon forget
When I have wrought my work alone.
If I be met by adverse fate,
And all my dreams be but in vain;
Then, must I work the harder yet
With high resolve to try again.
From distant mountains, high and low;
My future seems a boundless sea,
Where moving passions come and go.
Deep in my heart ambitions dwells;
He cheers me up the highland,
And guides me through the hills and dells
Wherein I pass the busy day.
I cannot write with Shakespeare's pen,
But I can love with Shakespeare's heart;
I love his skill his craft of men,
His mastery of poet's art.
I do not care for fame, has he,
Enthroned, was like unto a god:
The depths he reached are dark to me.
But I will grope the ways he tried.
I wear achievement’s coronet,
For best are they who see things done!
And all my cares I soon forget
When I have wrought my work alone.
If I be met by adverse fate,
And all my dreams be but in vain;
Then, must I work the harder yet
With high resolve to try again.
God said, “I made a man” by Jose Garcia Villa
God said, “I made a man out of clay-
But so bright he, he spun Himself to the brightest Day
Till he was all shining gold, and oh,
He was handsome to behold!
But in his hands held he a bow
Aimed at me who created him.
And said, “Wouldst murder me
Who am thy Fountainhead?”
Then spole he the man of gold:
I will not Murder thee! I do but
Measure thee. Hold Thy peace!”
And this I did, But I was curious of this so regal head.
“Give thy name! - “Sir! Genius.”
But so bright he, he spun Himself to the brightest Day
Till he was all shining gold, and oh,
He was handsome to behold!
But in his hands held he a bow
Aimed at me who created him.
And said, “Wouldst murder me
Who am thy Fountainhead?”
Then spole he the man of gold:
I will not Murder thee! I do but
Measure thee. Hold Thy peace!”
And this I did, But I was curious of this so regal head.
“Give thy name! - “Sir! Genius.”
Song of the Tear-gassed Man by Cirilio F. Bautista
I love it! I love it!
This teargas sanctifies my corrupted soul.
Oh! The divine odor of it, the excitement
better than demos or rock and roll.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
We may not have money in the bank,
no food on the table, no seat on the Love Bus,
but we have secret marshals and policemen
and most of all, we have a lot of teargas.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
We may not have houses and running water,
the taxmen may be running after us,
but we have floods, garbage, Amendment 6,
and most of all, we have a lot of teargas.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
Don’t save your tears, brother, they are meant
to be shed, you cannot turn them into cash,
but if you join me in this martial festival
you’ll get a taste of refreshing teargas.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
This teargas sanctifies my corrupted soul.
Oh! The divine odor of it, the excitement
better than demos or rock and roll.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
We may not have money in the bank,
no food on the table, no seat on the Love Bus,
but we have secret marshals and policemen
and most of all, we have a lot of teargas.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
We may not have houses and running water,
the taxmen may be running after us,
but we have floods, garbage, Amendment 6,
and most of all, we have a lot of teargas.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
Don’t save your tears, brother, they are meant
to be shed, you cannot turn them into cash,
but if you join me in this martial festival
you’ll get a taste of refreshing teargas.
Get a load of it, brother, while it’s free,
you may never get another chance;
this is the right stuff, the real McCoy,
pure, imported chemicals from France.
My Father's Tragedy by Carlos Bulosan
It was one of those lean years of our lives. Our rice field was destroyed by locusts that came from the neighboring towns. When the locusts were gone, we planted string beans but a fire burned the whole plantation. My brothers went away because they got tired working for nothing. Mother and my sisters went from house to house, asking for something to do, but every family was plagued with some kind of disaster. The children walked in the streets looking for the fruit that fell to the ground from the acacia tree. The men hung on the fence around the market and watched the meat dealers hungrily. We were all suffering from lack of proper food.
But the professional gamblers had money. They sat in the fish house at the station and gave their orders aloud. The loafers and other bystanders watched them eat boiled rice and fried fish with silver spoons. They never used forks because the prongs stuck between their teeth. They always cut their lips and tongues with the knives, so they never asked for them. If the waiter was new and he put the knives on the table, they looked at each other furtively and slipped them into their pockets. They washed their hands in one big wooden bowl of water and wiped their mouths with the leaves of the arbor trees that fell on the ground.
The rainy season was approaching. There were rumors of famine. The grass did not grow and our carabao became thin. Father’s fighting cock, Burick, was practically the only healthy thing in our household. Its father, Kanaway, had won a house for us some three years before, and Fathers had commanded me to give it the choicest rice. He took the soft-boiled eggs from the plate of my sister Marcela, who was sick with meningitis that year. He was preparing Burick for something big, but the great catastrophe came to our town. The peasants and most of the rich men spent their money on food. They had stopped going to the cockpit for fear of temptation; if they went at all, they just sat in the gallery and shouted at the top of their lungs. They went home with their heads down, thinking of the money they would have won.
It was during this impasse that Father sat every day in our backyard with his fighting cock. He would not go anywhere. He would not do anything. He just sat there caressing Burick and exercising his legs. He spat at his hackles and rubbed them, looking far away with a big dream. When mother came home with some food, he went to the granary and sat there till evening. Sometimes he slept there with Burick, but at dawn the cock woke him up with its majestic crowing. He crept into the house and fumbled for the cold rice in the pot under the stove. Then, he put the cock in the pen and slept on the bench all day.
Mother was very patient. But the day came when she kicked him off the bench. He fell on the floor face down, looked up at her, and then resumed his sleep. Mother took my sister Francisca with her. They went from house to house in the neighborhood, pounding rice for some people and hauling drinking water for others. They came home with their share in a big basket that Mother carried on her head.
Father was still sleeping on the bench when they arrived. Mother told my sister to cook some of the rice. The dipped a cup in the jar and splashed the cold water on Father’s face. He jumped up, looked at mother with anger, and went to Burick’s pen. He gathered the cock in his arms and went down the porch. He sat on a log in the backyard and started caressing his fighting cock.
Mother went on with her washing. Francisca fed Marcela with some boiled rice. Father was still caressing Burick. Mother was mad at him.
“Is that all you can do?” she shouted at him.
“Why do you say that to me?” Father said, “I’m thinking of some ways to become rich.”
Mother threw a piece of wood at the cock. Father saw her in time. He ducked and covered the cock with his body. The wood struck him. It cut a hole at the base of his head. He got up and examined Burick. He acted as though the cock were the one that got hurt. He looked up at Mother and his face was pitiful.
“Why don’t you see what you are doing?” he said, hugging Burick.
“I would like to wring that cock’s neck,” mother said.
“That’s his fortune,” I said.
Mother looked sharply atme. “Shut up, idiot!” she said. “ You are becoming more like your father every day.”
I watched her eyes move foolishly. I thought she would cry. She tucked her skirt between her legs and went on with her work. I ran down the ladder and went to the granary, where Father was treating the wound on his head. I held the cock for him.
“Take good care of it, son,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” I said.
“Go to the river and exercise its legs. Come back right away. We are going to town.”
I rand down the street with the cock, avoiding the pigs and dogs that came in my way. I plunged into the water in my clothes and swam with Burick. I put some water in my mouth and blew it into his face. I ran back to our house slapping the water off my clothes. Father and I went to the cockpit.
It was Sunday, but there were many loafers and gamblers at the place. There were peasants and teachers. There was a strange man who had a black fighting cock. He had come from one of the neighboring towns to seek his fortune in our cockpit.
His name was Burcio. He held her our cock above his head and closed one eye, looking sharply at Burick’s eyes. He put it on the ground and bent over it, pressing down the cock’s back with his hands. Burcio was testing Burick’s strength. The loafers and gamblers formed a ring around them, watching Burcio’s deft hands expertly moving around Burick.
Father also tested the cock of Burcio. He threw it in the air and watched it glide smoothly to the ground. He sparred with it. The black cock pecked at his legs and stopped to crow proudly for the bystanders. Father picked it up and spread its wings, feeling the tough hide beneath the feathers.
The bystanders knew that a fight was about to be matched. They counted the money in their pockets without showing it to their neighbors. They felf the edges of the coins with amazing swiftness and accuracy. Only a highly magnified amplifier could have recorded the tiny clink of the coins that fell between deft fingers. The caressing rustle of the paper money was inaudible. The peasants broke from the ring and hid behind the coconut trees. They unfolded their handkerchiefs and counted their money. They rolled the paper money in their hands and returned to the crowd. They waited for the final decision.
“Shall we make it this coming Sunday?” Burcio asked.
“It’s too soon for my Burick,” Father said. His hand moved mechanically into his pocket. But it was empty. He looked around at his cronies.
But two of the peasants caught Father’s arm and whispered something to him. They slipped some money in his hand and pushed him toward Burcio. He tried to estimate the amount of money in his hand by balling it hard. It was one of his many tricks with money. He knew right away that he had some twenty-peso bills. A light of hope appeared in his face.
“This coming Sunday is all right,” he said.
All at once the men broke into wild confusion. Some went to Burcio with their money; others went to Father. They were not bettors, but inventors. Their money would back up the cocks at the cockpit.
In the late afternoon the fight was arranged. We returned to our house with some hope. Father put Burick in the pen and told me to go to the fish ponds across the river. I ran down the road with mounting joy. I found a fish pond under the camachile tree. It was the favorite haunt of snails and shrimps. Then I went home.
Mother was cooking something good. I smelled it the moment I entered the gate. I rushed into the house and spilled some of the snails on the floor. Mother was at the stove. She was stirring the ladle in the boiling pot. Father was still sleeping on the bench. Francisca was feeding Marcela with hot soup. I put the nails and shrimps in a pot and sat on the bench.
Mother was cooking chicken with some bitter melons. I sat wondering where she got it. I knew that our poultry house in the village was empty. We had no poultry in town. Father opened his eyes when he heard the bubbling pot.
Mother put the rice on a big wooden platter and set it on the table she filled our plates with chicken meat and ginger. Father got up suddenly and went to the table. Francisca sat by the stove. Father was reaching for the white meat in the platter when Mother slapped his hand away. She was saying grace. Then we put our legs under the table and started eating.
It was our first tatse of chicken in a long time. Father filled his plate twice and ate very little rice. He usually ate more rice when we had only salted fish and some leaves of tress. We ate “grass” most of the time. Father tilted his plate and took the soup noisily, as though he were drinking wine. He put the empty plate near the pot and asked for some chicken meat.
“It is good chicken,” he said.
Mother was very quiet. She put the breast on a plate and told Francisca to give it to Marcela. She gave me some bitter melons. Father put his hand in the pot and fished out a drumstick.
“Where did you get this lovely chicken?” he asked.
“Where do you think I got it?” Mother said.
The drumstick fell from his mouth. It rolled into the space between the bamboo splits and fell on the ground. Our dog snapped it and ran away. Father’s face broke in great agony. He rushed outside the house. I could hear him running toward the highway. My sister continued eating, but my appetite was gone.
“What are you doing, Son?” Mother said. “Eat your chicken.”
But the professional gamblers had money. They sat in the fish house at the station and gave their orders aloud. The loafers and other bystanders watched them eat boiled rice and fried fish with silver spoons. They never used forks because the prongs stuck between their teeth. They always cut their lips and tongues with the knives, so they never asked for them. If the waiter was new and he put the knives on the table, they looked at each other furtively and slipped them into their pockets. They washed their hands in one big wooden bowl of water and wiped their mouths with the leaves of the arbor trees that fell on the ground.
The rainy season was approaching. There were rumors of famine. The grass did not grow and our carabao became thin. Father’s fighting cock, Burick, was practically the only healthy thing in our household. Its father, Kanaway, had won a house for us some three years before, and Fathers had commanded me to give it the choicest rice. He took the soft-boiled eggs from the plate of my sister Marcela, who was sick with meningitis that year. He was preparing Burick for something big, but the great catastrophe came to our town. The peasants and most of the rich men spent their money on food. They had stopped going to the cockpit for fear of temptation; if they went at all, they just sat in the gallery and shouted at the top of their lungs. They went home with their heads down, thinking of the money they would have won.
It was during this impasse that Father sat every day in our backyard with his fighting cock. He would not go anywhere. He would not do anything. He just sat there caressing Burick and exercising his legs. He spat at his hackles and rubbed them, looking far away with a big dream. When mother came home with some food, he went to the granary and sat there till evening. Sometimes he slept there with Burick, but at dawn the cock woke him up with its majestic crowing. He crept into the house and fumbled for the cold rice in the pot under the stove. Then, he put the cock in the pen and slept on the bench all day.
Mother was very patient. But the day came when she kicked him off the bench. He fell on the floor face down, looked up at her, and then resumed his sleep. Mother took my sister Francisca with her. They went from house to house in the neighborhood, pounding rice for some people and hauling drinking water for others. They came home with their share in a big basket that Mother carried on her head.
Father was still sleeping on the bench when they arrived. Mother told my sister to cook some of the rice. The dipped a cup in the jar and splashed the cold water on Father’s face. He jumped up, looked at mother with anger, and went to Burick’s pen. He gathered the cock in his arms and went down the porch. He sat on a log in the backyard and started caressing his fighting cock.
Mother went on with her washing. Francisca fed Marcela with some boiled rice. Father was still caressing Burick. Mother was mad at him.
“Is that all you can do?” she shouted at him.
“Why do you say that to me?” Father said, “I’m thinking of some ways to become rich.”
Mother threw a piece of wood at the cock. Father saw her in time. He ducked and covered the cock with his body. The wood struck him. It cut a hole at the base of his head. He got up and examined Burick. He acted as though the cock were the one that got hurt. He looked up at Mother and his face was pitiful.
“Why don’t you see what you are doing?” he said, hugging Burick.
“I would like to wring that cock’s neck,” mother said.
“That’s his fortune,” I said.
Mother looked sharply atme. “Shut up, idiot!” she said. “ You are becoming more like your father every day.”
I watched her eyes move foolishly. I thought she would cry. She tucked her skirt between her legs and went on with her work. I ran down the ladder and went to the granary, where Father was treating the wound on his head. I held the cock for him.
“Take good care of it, son,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” I said.
“Go to the river and exercise its legs. Come back right away. We are going to town.”
I rand down the street with the cock, avoiding the pigs and dogs that came in my way. I plunged into the water in my clothes and swam with Burick. I put some water in my mouth and blew it into his face. I ran back to our house slapping the water off my clothes. Father and I went to the cockpit.
It was Sunday, but there were many loafers and gamblers at the place. There were peasants and teachers. There was a strange man who had a black fighting cock. He had come from one of the neighboring towns to seek his fortune in our cockpit.
His name was Burcio. He held her our cock above his head and closed one eye, looking sharply at Burick’s eyes. He put it on the ground and bent over it, pressing down the cock’s back with his hands. Burcio was testing Burick’s strength. The loafers and gamblers formed a ring around them, watching Burcio’s deft hands expertly moving around Burick.
Father also tested the cock of Burcio. He threw it in the air and watched it glide smoothly to the ground. He sparred with it. The black cock pecked at his legs and stopped to crow proudly for the bystanders. Father picked it up and spread its wings, feeling the tough hide beneath the feathers.
The bystanders knew that a fight was about to be matched. They counted the money in their pockets without showing it to their neighbors. They felf the edges of the coins with amazing swiftness and accuracy. Only a highly magnified amplifier could have recorded the tiny clink of the coins that fell between deft fingers. The caressing rustle of the paper money was inaudible. The peasants broke from the ring and hid behind the coconut trees. They unfolded their handkerchiefs and counted their money. They rolled the paper money in their hands and returned to the crowd. They waited for the final decision.
“Shall we make it this coming Sunday?” Burcio asked.
“It’s too soon for my Burick,” Father said. His hand moved mechanically into his pocket. But it was empty. He looked around at his cronies.
But two of the peasants caught Father’s arm and whispered something to him. They slipped some money in his hand and pushed him toward Burcio. He tried to estimate the amount of money in his hand by balling it hard. It was one of his many tricks with money. He knew right away that he had some twenty-peso bills. A light of hope appeared in his face.
“This coming Sunday is all right,” he said.
All at once the men broke into wild confusion. Some went to Burcio with their money; others went to Father. They were not bettors, but inventors. Their money would back up the cocks at the cockpit.
In the late afternoon the fight was arranged. We returned to our house with some hope. Father put Burick in the pen and told me to go to the fish ponds across the river. I ran down the road with mounting joy. I found a fish pond under the camachile tree. It was the favorite haunt of snails and shrimps. Then I went home.
Mother was cooking something good. I smelled it the moment I entered the gate. I rushed into the house and spilled some of the snails on the floor. Mother was at the stove. She was stirring the ladle in the boiling pot. Father was still sleeping on the bench. Francisca was feeding Marcela with hot soup. I put the nails and shrimps in a pot and sat on the bench.
Mother was cooking chicken with some bitter melons. I sat wondering where she got it. I knew that our poultry house in the village was empty. We had no poultry in town. Father opened his eyes when he heard the bubbling pot.
Mother put the rice on a big wooden platter and set it on the table she filled our plates with chicken meat and ginger. Father got up suddenly and went to the table. Francisca sat by the stove. Father was reaching for the white meat in the platter when Mother slapped his hand away. She was saying grace. Then we put our legs under the table and started eating.
It was our first tatse of chicken in a long time. Father filled his plate twice and ate very little rice. He usually ate more rice when we had only salted fish and some leaves of tress. We ate “grass” most of the time. Father tilted his plate and took the soup noisily, as though he were drinking wine. He put the empty plate near the pot and asked for some chicken meat.
“It is good chicken,” he said.
Mother was very quiet. She put the breast on a plate and told Francisca to give it to Marcela. She gave me some bitter melons. Father put his hand in the pot and fished out a drumstick.
“Where did you get this lovely chicken?” he asked.
“Where do you think I got it?” Mother said.
The drumstick fell from his mouth. It rolled into the space between the bamboo splits and fell on the ground. Our dog snapped it and ran away. Father’s face broke in great agony. He rushed outside the house. I could hear him running toward the highway. My sister continued eating, but my appetite was gone.
“What are you doing, Son?” Mother said. “Eat your chicken.”
I Apologize, Waling-Waling by Peter Solis Nery
I Apologize, Waling-Waling
Peter Solis Nery
i am coming back
for you, waling-waling
listen to me for a moment
and try to understand
however clumsy my explanation
spread out our velvet petals
and let my story gently open
your clenched moist anger
betray you i did not
i was faithful to my promise
i kept the secrecy of your place
my intentions were pure
i only wished...
oh, that the world would
love you and protect you
i trusted that they would protect
your beauty and your peace
but their greed defeated me
and who would ever imagine
that three pictures
would lead the wild throng to you.
i did not betray you, waling-waling
i pleaded on your behalf
but the loggers’ chainsaws were deaf
i never intended greed
i never aimed selfishness
all i ever wanted was a happy forest
and your safety
from the madness of greed
forgive me, waling-waling
for the hastened fall of the forest
it was the luster of money
that my deal partners saw
i tried to stop them
but there were too many of them
and they tied me down
i cry for the orphans of the forest
because believe me
my intentions were pure
Peter Solis Nery
i am coming back
for you, waling-waling
listen to me for a moment
and try to understand
however clumsy my explanation
spread out our velvet petals
and let my story gently open
your clenched moist anger
betray you i did not
i was faithful to my promise
i kept the secrecy of your place
my intentions were pure
i only wished...
oh, that the world would
love you and protect you
i trusted that they would protect
your beauty and your peace
but their greed defeated me
and who would ever imagine
that three pictures
would lead the wild throng to you.
i did not betray you, waling-waling
i pleaded on your behalf
but the loggers’ chainsaws were deaf
i never intended greed
i never aimed selfishness
all i ever wanted was a happy forest
and your safety
from the madness of greed
forgive me, waling-waling
for the hastened fall of the forest
it was the luster of money
that my deal partners saw
i tried to stop them
but there were too many of them
and they tied me down
i cry for the orphans of the forest
because believe me
my intentions were pure
Prayer of a Student by Trinidad L. Tarrosa-Subido
Prayer of a Student
Trinidad L. Tarrosa-Subido
To learn, dear Lord, about these em’rald leaves,
These tendered-petalled blosssoms laved in dew.
From where they came, and how and why they lived;
Or yet to know why ocean waters lash
Their atomed selves against the granite rocks
That senseless lie along the shores; to know
Why rainbows fling their ribboned souls athwart
The eastern skies when sunrays flick the west;
Why lightning furies rage when storm winds still
The thunder echoes hurtling through the dark;
To learn about the earth, about the moon,
The sun and lesser stars and other worlds
That span the cerulescent firmament.
To learn great facts about the little things
And then, while knowing these, not to unlearn-
Never, O God, to unlearn the child-learned truth
That thou art in reality the source,
The Why, the How, the Wherefore, of all things.
Trinidad L. Tarrosa-Subido
To learn, dear Lord, about these em’rald leaves,
These tendered-petalled blosssoms laved in dew.
From where they came, and how and why they lived;
Or yet to know why ocean waters lash
Their atomed selves against the granite rocks
That senseless lie along the shores; to know
Why rainbows fling their ribboned souls athwart
The eastern skies when sunrays flick the west;
Why lightning furies rage when storm winds still
The thunder echoes hurtling through the dark;
To learn about the earth, about the moon,
The sun and lesser stars and other worlds
That span the cerulescent firmament.
To learn great facts about the little things
And then, while knowing these, not to unlearn-
Never, O God, to unlearn the child-learned truth
That thou art in reality the source,
The Why, the How, the Wherefore, of all things.
A Tree By Jose Coazon de Jesus
A Tree
By Jose Coazon de Jesus
Viewed from a distant vantage
I appear as a cross with arms outstretched;
As I stayed on my knees long enduring,
It seems that I am kissing God’s feet.
Like an organ in a church,
Praying amid extreme sorrows,
Is the candle flame of my life
Keeping vigil upon my tomb.
At my feet is a spring
That sobs all day and all night;
Upon my branches lie
The nests of love-birds.
By the sparkling of that spring
You’d think of flowing tears bubbling;
And the Moon that seems to be praying
Greets me with a pale smile.
The bells tolling the vespers
Hint to me their wailing;
Birds on my branches are covered with leaves,
The spring at my feet has tears welling.
But look at my fate,
Dried-up, dying alone comforting myself.
I became the cross of withered love,
And a watcher of tombs in the darkness.
All is ended! Night is a mantle of mourning
That I use to cover my face!
A fallen piece of food am I, and prostrate
Neither bird nor people find any pleasure.
And to think that in the days past
A tree I was of luxuriant and leafy growth;
Now my branches are crosses o’er graves,
My leaves made into wreaths on tombs!
By Jose Coazon de Jesus
Viewed from a distant vantage
I appear as a cross with arms outstretched;
As I stayed on my knees long enduring,
It seems that I am kissing God’s feet.
Like an organ in a church,
Praying amid extreme sorrows,
Is the candle flame of my life
Keeping vigil upon my tomb.
At my feet is a spring
That sobs all day and all night;
Upon my branches lie
The nests of love-birds.
By the sparkling of that spring
You’d think of flowing tears bubbling;
And the Moon that seems to be praying
Greets me with a pale smile.
The bells tolling the vespers
Hint to me their wailing;
Birds on my branches are covered with leaves,
The spring at my feet has tears welling.
But look at my fate,
Dried-up, dying alone comforting myself.
I became the cross of withered love,
And a watcher of tombs in the darkness.
All is ended! Night is a mantle of mourning
That I use to cover my face!
A fallen piece of food am I, and prostrate
Neither bird nor people find any pleasure.
And to think that in the days past
A tree I was of luxuriant and leafy growth;
Now my branches are crosses o’er graves,
My leaves made into wreaths on tombs!
The March of Death By Bienvenido N. Santos
The March of Death
By Bienvenido N. Santos
Were you one of them, my brother
Whom they marched under the April sun
And flogged to bleeding along the roads we knew and loved?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear beyond the road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We were young together,
So very young and unafraid;
Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun,
Brown pools and mud in the December rains;
We ran barefoot along the beaten tracks in the canefields
Planted corn after the harvest months.
Here, too, we fought and loved
Shared our dreams of a better place
Beyond those winding trails.
March, my brother march!
The springs are clear beyond the road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We knew those roads by heart
Told places in the dark
By the fragrance of garden hedge
In front of uncle’s house;
The clatter of wooden shoes on the bamboo bridge,
The peculiar rustling of bamboo groves
Beside the house where Celia lived.
Did you look through the blood in your eyes
For Celia sitting by the window,
As thousands upon thousands of you
Walked and died on the burning road?
If you died among the hundreds by the roadside
It should have been by the bamboo groves
With the peculiar rustling in the midnight.
No, you have not died; you cannot die;
I have felt your prayer touch my heart
As I walked along the crowded streets of America.
And we would walk those roads again one April morn,
Listen to the sound of working men
Dragging tree trunks from the forests,
Rebuilding homes- laughing again-
Sowing the field with grain, fearless of death
From cloudless skies.
You would be silent, remembering
The many young bodies that lay mangled by the roadside;
The agony and the moaning and the silent tears,
The grin of yellow men, their bloodstained blades opaque in the sun;
I would be silent, too, having nothing to say.
What matters if the winters were bitter cold
And loneliness stalked my footsteps on the snow?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear beyond the road
Rest, at the foot of the hill.
And we would walk those roads again on April morn
Hand in hand like pilgrims marching
Towards the church on the hillside,
Only a little nipa house beside the bamboo groves
With the peculiar rustling in the midnight
Or maybe I would walk them yet,
Remembering... remembering
By Bienvenido N. Santos
Were you one of them, my brother
Whom they marched under the April sun
And flogged to bleeding along the roads we knew and loved?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear beyond the road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We were young together,
So very young and unafraid;
Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun,
Brown pools and mud in the December rains;
We ran barefoot along the beaten tracks in the canefields
Planted corn after the harvest months.
Here, too, we fought and loved
Shared our dreams of a better place
Beyond those winding trails.
March, my brother march!
The springs are clear beyond the road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We knew those roads by heart
Told places in the dark
By the fragrance of garden hedge
In front of uncle’s house;
The clatter of wooden shoes on the bamboo bridge,
The peculiar rustling of bamboo groves
Beside the house where Celia lived.
Did you look through the blood in your eyes
For Celia sitting by the window,
As thousands upon thousands of you
Walked and died on the burning road?
If you died among the hundreds by the roadside
It should have been by the bamboo groves
With the peculiar rustling in the midnight.
No, you have not died; you cannot die;
I have felt your prayer touch my heart
As I walked along the crowded streets of America.
And we would walk those roads again one April morn,
Listen to the sound of working men
Dragging tree trunks from the forests,
Rebuilding homes- laughing again-
Sowing the field with grain, fearless of death
From cloudless skies.
You would be silent, remembering
The many young bodies that lay mangled by the roadside;
The agony and the moaning and the silent tears,
The grin of yellow men, their bloodstained blades opaque in the sun;
I would be silent, too, having nothing to say.
What matters if the winters were bitter cold
And loneliness stalked my footsteps on the snow?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear beyond the road
Rest, at the foot of the hill.
And we would walk those roads again on April morn
Hand in hand like pilgrims marching
Towards the church on the hillside,
Only a little nipa house beside the bamboo groves
With the peculiar rustling in the midnight
Or maybe I would walk them yet,
Remembering... remembering
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Atsumori, A Noh play
ATSUMORI
By SEAMI
PERSONS
THE PRIEST RENSEI (formerly the warrior Kumagai).
A YOUNG REAPER, who turns out to be the ghost of Atsumori.
HIS COMPANION.
CHORUS.
PRIEST.
Life is a lying dream, he only wakes
Who casts the World aside.
I am Kumagai no Naozane, a man of the country of Musashi. I have left my home and call myself the priest Rensei; this I have done because of my grief at the death of Atsumori, who fell in battle by my hand. Hence it comes that I am dressed in priestly guise.
And now I am going down to Ichi-no-Tani to pray for the salvation of Atsumori's soul.
(He walks slowly across the stage, singing a song descriptive of his journey.)
I have come so fast that here I am already at Ichi-no-Tani, in the country of Tsu.
Truly the past returns to my mind as though it were a thing of to-day.
But listen! I hear the sound of a flute coming from a knoll of rising ground. I will wait here till the flute-player passes, and ask him to tell me the story of this place.
REAPERS (together).
To the music of the reaper's flute
No song is sung
But the sighing of wind in the fields.
YOUNG REAPER.
They that were reaping,
Reaping on that hill,p. 37
Walk now through the fields
Homeward, for it is dusk.
REAPERS (together).
Short is the way that leads 1
From the sea of Suma back to my home.
This little journey, up to the hill
And down to the shore again, and up to the hill,--
This is my life, and the sum of hateful tasks.
If one should ask me
I too 2 would answer
That on the shores of Suma
I live in sadness.
Yet if any guessed my name,
Then might I too have friends.
But now from my deep misery
Even those that were dearest
Are grown estranged. Here must I dwell abandoned
To one thought's anguish:
That I must dwell here.
PRIEST.
Hey, you reapers! I have a question to ask you.
YOUNG REAPER.
Is it to us you are speaking? What do you wish to know?
PRIEST.
Was it one of you who was playing on the flute just now?
YOUNG REAPER.
Yes, it was we who were playing.
PRIEST.
It was a pleasant sound, and all the pleasanter because one does not look for such music from men of your condition.
YOUNG REAPER.
Unlocked for from men of our condition, you say! Have you not read:--
p. 38
"Do not envy what is above you
Nor despise what is below you"?
Moreover the songs of woodmen and the flute-playing of herdsmen,
Flute-playing even of reapers and songs of wood-fellers
Through poets' verses are known to all the world.
Wonder not to hear among us
The sound of a bamboo-flute.
PRIEST.
You are right. Indeed it is as you have told me.
Songs of woodmen and flute-playing of herdsmen . . .
REAPER.
Flute-playing of reapers . . .
PRIEST.
Songs of wood-fellers
REAPERS.
Guide us on our passage through this sad world.
PRIEST.
Song . . .
REAPER.
And dance
PRIEST.
And the flute . . .
And music of many instruments . . .
REAPER.
CHORUS.
These are the pastimes that each chooses to his taste.
Of floating bamboo-wood
Many are the famous flutes that have been made;
Little-Branch and Cicada-Cage,
And as for the reaper's flute,
Its name is Green-leaf;
On the shore of Sumiyoshi
The Corean flute they play.p. 39
And here on the shore of Suma
On Stick of the Salt-kilns
The fishers blow their tune.
PRIEST.
How strange it is! The other reapers have all gone home, but you alone stay loitering here. How is that?
REAPER.
How is it, you ask? I am seeking for a prayer in the voice of the evening waves. Perhaps you will pray the Ten Prayers for me?
PRIEST.
I can easily pray the Ten Prayers for you, if you will tell me who you are.
REAPER.
To tell you the truth--I am one of the family of Lord Atsumori.
PRIEST.
One of Atsumori's family? How glad I am!
Then the priest joined his hands (he kneels down) and prayed:--
NAMU AMIDABU.
Praise to Amida Buddha!
"If I attain to Buddhahood,
In the whole world and its ten spheres
Of all that dwell here none shall call on my name
And be rejected or cast aside."
CHORUS.
"Oh, reject me not!
One cry suffices for salvation,
Yet day and night
Your prayers will rise for me.
Happy am I, for though you know not my name,
Yet for my soul's deliverance
At dawn and dusk henceforward I know that you will pray."
So he spoke. Then vanished and was seen no more.
(Here follows the Interlude between the two Acts, in which a recitation concerning Atsumori's death takes place. These p. 40 interludes are subject to variation and are not considered part of the literary text of the play.)
PRIEST.
Since this is so, I will perform all night the rites of prayer for the dead, and calling upon Amida's name will pray again for the salvation of Atsumori.
(The ghost of ATSUMORI appears, dressed as a young warrior.)
ATSUMORI.
Would you know who I am
That like the watchmen at Suma Pass
Have wakened at the cry of sea-birds roaming
Upon Awaji shore?
Listen, Rensei. I am Atsumori.
PRIEST.
How strange! All this while I have never stopped beating my gong and performing the rites of the Law. I cannot for a moment have dozed, yet I thought that Atsumori was standing before me. Surely it was a dream.
ATSUMORI.
Why need it be a dream? It is to clear the karma of my waking life that I am come here in visible form before you.
PRIEST.
Is it not written that one prayer will wipe away ten thousand sins? Ceaselessly I have performed the ritual of the Holy Name that clears all sin away. After such prayers, what evil can be left? Though you should be sunk in sin as deep . . .
ATSUMORI.
As the sea by a rocky shore,
Yet should I be salved by prayer.
PRIEST.
And that my prayers should save you . . .
ATSUMORI.
This too must spring p. 41
From kindness of a former life. 1
PRIEST.
Once enemies . . .
ATSUMORI.
But now . . .
PRIEST.
In truth may we be named . . .
ATSUMORI.
Friends in Buddha's Law.
CHORUS.
There is a saying, "Put away from you a wicked friend; summon to your side a virtuous enemy." For you it was said, and you have proven it true.
And now come tell with us the tale of your confession, while the night is still dark.
CHORUS.
He 2 bids the flowers of Spring
Mount the tree-top that men may raise their eyes
And walk on upward paths;
He bids the moon in autumn waves be drowned
In token that he visits laggard men
And leads them out from valleys of despair.
ATSUMORI.
Now the clan of Taira, building wall to wall,
Spread over the earth like the leafy branches of a great tree:
CHORUS.
Yet their prosperity lasted but for a day;
It was like the flower of the convolvulus.
There was none to tell them 3 p. 42
That glory flashes like sparks from flint-stone,
And after,--darkness.
Oh wretched, the life of men!
ATSUMORI.
When they were on high they afflicted the humble;
When they were rich they were reckless in pride.
And so for twenty years and more
They ruled this land.
But truly a generation passes like the space of a dream.
The leaves of the autumn of Juyei 1
Were tossed by the four winds;
Scattered, scattered (like leaves too) floated their ships.
And they, asleep on the heaving sea, not even in dream
Went back to home.
Caged birds longing for the clouds,--
Wild geese were they rather, whose ranks are broken
As they fly to southward on their doubtful journey.
So days and months went by; Spring came again
And for a little while
Here dwelt they on the shore of Suma
At the first valley. 2
From the mountain behind us the winds blew down
Till the fields grew wintry again.
Our ships lay by the shore, where night and day
The sea-gulls cried and salt waves washed on our sleeves.
We slept with fishers in their buts
On pillows of sand.
We knew none but the people of Suma.
And when among the pine-trees
The evening smoke was rising,
Brushwood, as they call it, 3
Brushwood we gathered
And spread for carpet.
Sorrowful we lived
On the wild shore of Suma,
Till the clan Taira and all its princes
Were but villagers of Suma.
p. 43
ATSUMORI.
But on the night of the sixth day of the second month
My father Tsunemori gathered us together.
"To-morrow," he said, "we shall fight our last fight.
To-night is all that is left us."
We sang songs together, and danced.
PRIEST.
Yes, I remember; we in our siege-camp
Heard the sound of music
Echoing from your tents that night,;
There was the music of a flute . . .
ATSUMORI.
The bamboo-flute! I wore it when I died.
PRIEST.
We heard the singing . . .
ATSUMORI.
Songs and ballads . . .
PRIEST.
Many voices
ATSUMORI.
Singing to one measure.
(ATSUMORI dances.)
First comes the Royal Boat.
CHORUS.
The whole clan has put its boats to sea.
He 1 will not be left behind;
He runs to the shore.
But the Royal Boat and the soldiers' boats
Have sailed far away.
ATSUMORI.
What can he do? p. 44
He spurs his horse into the waves.
He is full of perplexity. And then
CHORUS.
He looks behind him and sees
That Kumagai pursues him;
He cannot escape.
Then Atsumori turns his horse
Knee-deep in the lashing waves,
And draws his sword.
Twice, three times he strikes; then, still saddled,
In close fight they twine; roll headlong together
Among the surf of the shore.
So Atsumori fell and was slain, but now the Wheel of Fate
Has turned and brought him back.
(ATSUMORI rises from the ground and advances toward the PRIEST with uplifted sword.)
"There is my enemy," he cries, and would strike,
But the other is grown gentle
And calling on Buddha's name
Has obtained salvation for his foe;
So that they shall be re-born together
On one lotus-seat.
"No, Rensei is not my enemy.
Pray for me again, oh pray for me again."
By SEAMI
PERSONS
THE PRIEST RENSEI (formerly the warrior Kumagai).
A YOUNG REAPER, who turns out to be the ghost of Atsumori.
HIS COMPANION.
CHORUS.
PRIEST.
Life is a lying dream, he only wakes
Who casts the World aside.
I am Kumagai no Naozane, a man of the country of Musashi. I have left my home and call myself the priest Rensei; this I have done because of my grief at the death of Atsumori, who fell in battle by my hand. Hence it comes that I am dressed in priestly guise.
And now I am going down to Ichi-no-Tani to pray for the salvation of Atsumori's soul.
(He walks slowly across the stage, singing a song descriptive of his journey.)
I have come so fast that here I am already at Ichi-no-Tani, in the country of Tsu.
Truly the past returns to my mind as though it were a thing of to-day.
But listen! I hear the sound of a flute coming from a knoll of rising ground. I will wait here till the flute-player passes, and ask him to tell me the story of this place.
REAPERS (together).
To the music of the reaper's flute
No song is sung
But the sighing of wind in the fields.
YOUNG REAPER.
They that were reaping,
Reaping on that hill,p. 37
Walk now through the fields
Homeward, for it is dusk.
REAPERS (together).
Short is the way that leads 1
From the sea of Suma back to my home.
This little journey, up to the hill
And down to the shore again, and up to the hill,--
This is my life, and the sum of hateful tasks.
If one should ask me
I too 2 would answer
That on the shores of Suma
I live in sadness.
Yet if any guessed my name,
Then might I too have friends.
But now from my deep misery
Even those that were dearest
Are grown estranged. Here must I dwell abandoned
To one thought's anguish:
That I must dwell here.
PRIEST.
Hey, you reapers! I have a question to ask you.
YOUNG REAPER.
Is it to us you are speaking? What do you wish to know?
PRIEST.
Was it one of you who was playing on the flute just now?
YOUNG REAPER.
Yes, it was we who were playing.
PRIEST.
It was a pleasant sound, and all the pleasanter because one does not look for such music from men of your condition.
YOUNG REAPER.
Unlocked for from men of our condition, you say! Have you not read:--
p. 38
"Do not envy what is above you
Nor despise what is below you"?
Moreover the songs of woodmen and the flute-playing of herdsmen,
Flute-playing even of reapers and songs of wood-fellers
Through poets' verses are known to all the world.
Wonder not to hear among us
The sound of a bamboo-flute.
PRIEST.
You are right. Indeed it is as you have told me.
Songs of woodmen and flute-playing of herdsmen . . .
REAPER.
Flute-playing of reapers . . .
PRIEST.
Songs of wood-fellers
REAPERS.
Guide us on our passage through this sad world.
PRIEST.
Song . . .
REAPER.
And dance
PRIEST.
And the flute . . .
And music of many instruments . . .
REAPER.
CHORUS.
These are the pastimes that each chooses to his taste.
Of floating bamboo-wood
Many are the famous flutes that have been made;
Little-Branch and Cicada-Cage,
And as for the reaper's flute,
Its name is Green-leaf;
On the shore of Sumiyoshi
The Corean flute they play.p. 39
And here on the shore of Suma
On Stick of the Salt-kilns
The fishers blow their tune.
PRIEST.
How strange it is! The other reapers have all gone home, but you alone stay loitering here. How is that?
REAPER.
How is it, you ask? I am seeking for a prayer in the voice of the evening waves. Perhaps you will pray the Ten Prayers for me?
PRIEST.
I can easily pray the Ten Prayers for you, if you will tell me who you are.
REAPER.
To tell you the truth--I am one of the family of Lord Atsumori.
PRIEST.
One of Atsumori's family? How glad I am!
Then the priest joined his hands (he kneels down) and prayed:--
NAMU AMIDABU.
Praise to Amida Buddha!
"If I attain to Buddhahood,
In the whole world and its ten spheres
Of all that dwell here none shall call on my name
And be rejected or cast aside."
CHORUS.
"Oh, reject me not!
One cry suffices for salvation,
Yet day and night
Your prayers will rise for me.
Happy am I, for though you know not my name,
Yet for my soul's deliverance
At dawn and dusk henceforward I know that you will pray."
So he spoke. Then vanished and was seen no more.
(Here follows the Interlude between the two Acts, in which a recitation concerning Atsumori's death takes place. These p. 40 interludes are subject to variation and are not considered part of the literary text of the play.)
PRIEST.
Since this is so, I will perform all night the rites of prayer for the dead, and calling upon Amida's name will pray again for the salvation of Atsumori.
(The ghost of ATSUMORI appears, dressed as a young warrior.)
ATSUMORI.
Would you know who I am
That like the watchmen at Suma Pass
Have wakened at the cry of sea-birds roaming
Upon Awaji shore?
Listen, Rensei. I am Atsumori.
PRIEST.
How strange! All this while I have never stopped beating my gong and performing the rites of the Law. I cannot for a moment have dozed, yet I thought that Atsumori was standing before me. Surely it was a dream.
ATSUMORI.
Why need it be a dream? It is to clear the karma of my waking life that I am come here in visible form before you.
PRIEST.
Is it not written that one prayer will wipe away ten thousand sins? Ceaselessly I have performed the ritual of the Holy Name that clears all sin away. After such prayers, what evil can be left? Though you should be sunk in sin as deep . . .
ATSUMORI.
As the sea by a rocky shore,
Yet should I be salved by prayer.
PRIEST.
And that my prayers should save you . . .
ATSUMORI.
This too must spring p. 41
From kindness of a former life. 1
PRIEST.
Once enemies . . .
ATSUMORI.
But now . . .
PRIEST.
In truth may we be named . . .
ATSUMORI.
Friends in Buddha's Law.
CHORUS.
There is a saying, "Put away from you a wicked friend; summon to your side a virtuous enemy." For you it was said, and you have proven it true.
And now come tell with us the tale of your confession, while the night is still dark.
CHORUS.
He 2 bids the flowers of Spring
Mount the tree-top that men may raise their eyes
And walk on upward paths;
He bids the moon in autumn waves be drowned
In token that he visits laggard men
And leads them out from valleys of despair.
ATSUMORI.
Now the clan of Taira, building wall to wall,
Spread over the earth like the leafy branches of a great tree:
CHORUS.
Yet their prosperity lasted but for a day;
It was like the flower of the convolvulus.
There was none to tell them 3 p. 42
That glory flashes like sparks from flint-stone,
And after,--darkness.
Oh wretched, the life of men!
ATSUMORI.
When they were on high they afflicted the humble;
When they were rich they were reckless in pride.
And so for twenty years and more
They ruled this land.
But truly a generation passes like the space of a dream.
The leaves of the autumn of Juyei 1
Were tossed by the four winds;
Scattered, scattered (like leaves too) floated their ships.
And they, asleep on the heaving sea, not even in dream
Went back to home.
Caged birds longing for the clouds,--
Wild geese were they rather, whose ranks are broken
As they fly to southward on their doubtful journey.
So days and months went by; Spring came again
And for a little while
Here dwelt they on the shore of Suma
At the first valley. 2
From the mountain behind us the winds blew down
Till the fields grew wintry again.
Our ships lay by the shore, where night and day
The sea-gulls cried and salt waves washed on our sleeves.
We slept with fishers in their buts
On pillows of sand.
We knew none but the people of Suma.
And when among the pine-trees
The evening smoke was rising,
Brushwood, as they call it, 3
Brushwood we gathered
And spread for carpet.
Sorrowful we lived
On the wild shore of Suma,
Till the clan Taira and all its princes
Were but villagers of Suma.
p. 43
ATSUMORI.
But on the night of the sixth day of the second month
My father Tsunemori gathered us together.
"To-morrow," he said, "we shall fight our last fight.
To-night is all that is left us."
We sang songs together, and danced.
PRIEST.
Yes, I remember; we in our siege-camp
Heard the sound of music
Echoing from your tents that night,;
There was the music of a flute . . .
ATSUMORI.
The bamboo-flute! I wore it when I died.
PRIEST.
We heard the singing . . .
ATSUMORI.
Songs and ballads . . .
PRIEST.
Many voices
ATSUMORI.
Singing to one measure.
(ATSUMORI dances.)
First comes the Royal Boat.
CHORUS.
The whole clan has put its boats to sea.
He 1 will not be left behind;
He runs to the shore.
But the Royal Boat and the soldiers' boats
Have sailed far away.
ATSUMORI.
What can he do? p. 44
He spurs his horse into the waves.
He is full of perplexity. And then
CHORUS.
He looks behind him and sees
That Kumagai pursues him;
He cannot escape.
Then Atsumori turns his horse
Knee-deep in the lashing waves,
And draws his sword.
Twice, three times he strikes; then, still saddled,
In close fight they twine; roll headlong together
Among the surf of the shore.
So Atsumori fell and was slain, but now the Wheel of Fate
Has turned and brought him back.
(ATSUMORI rises from the ground and advances toward the PRIEST with uplifted sword.)
"There is my enemy," he cries, and would strike,
But the other is grown gentle
And calling on Buddha's name
Has obtained salvation for his foe;
So that they shall be re-born together
On one lotus-seat.
"No, Rensei is not my enemy.
Pray for me again, oh pray for me again."
Footnote to Youth by Jose Garcia Villa
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong's grandmother.
I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.
The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong's foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests.
Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already was dark--these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man--he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents.
Dodong's mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father.
Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His father looked old now.
"I am going to marry Teang," Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.
"I will marry Teang," Dodong repeated. "I will marry Teang."
His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
"I asked her last night to marry me and she said...yes. I want your permission. I... want... it...." There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness.
"Must you marry, Dodong?"
Dodong resented his father's questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.
"You are very young, Dodong."
"I'm... seventeen."
"That's very young to get married at."
"I... I want to marry...Teang's a good girl."
"Tell your mother," his father said.
"You tell her, tatay."
"Dodong, you tell your inay."
"You tell her."
"All right, Dodong."
"You will let me marry Teang?"
"Son, if that is your wish... of course..." There was a strange helpless light in his father's eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream....
-------------------------------------------
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.
In a few moments he would be a father. "Father, father," he whispered the word with awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable... "Your son," people would soon be telling him. "Your son, Dodong."
Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children... What made him think that? What was the matter with him? God!
He heard his mother's voice from the house:
"Come up, Dodong. It is over."
Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.
"Dodong," his mother called again. "Dodong."
He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.
"It is a boy," his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents' eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp.
He wanted to hide from them, to run away.
"Dodong, you come up. You come up," he mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.
"Dodong. Dodong."
"I'll... come up."
Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.
His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.
"Son," his father said.
And his mother: "Dodong..."
How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.
"Teang?" Dodong said.
"She's sleeping. But you go on..."
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me," Dodong said.
-------------------------------------------
Blas was not Dodong's only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong...
Dodong whom life had made ugly.
One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He w anted to be wise about many things.
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth's dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken... after Love.
Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas's steps, for he could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.
"You better go to sleep. It is late," Dodong said.
Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.
Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.
"Itay ...," Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
"I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight."
Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.
"Itay, you think it over."
Dodong lay silent.
"I love Tona and... I want her."
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.
"You want to marry Tona," Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard...
"Yes."
"Must you marry?"
Blas's voice stilled with resentment. "I will marry Tona."
Dodong kept silent, hurt.
"You have objections, Itay?" Blas asked acridly.
"Son... n-none..." (But truly, God, I don't want Blas to marry yet... not yet. I don't want Blas to marry yet....)
But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph... now. Love must triumph... now. Afterwards... it will be life.
As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong... and then Life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.
I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.
The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong's foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests.
Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already was dark--these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man--he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents.
Dodong's mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father.
Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His father looked old now.
"I am going to marry Teang," Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.
"I will marry Teang," Dodong repeated. "I will marry Teang."
His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
"I asked her last night to marry me and she said...yes. I want your permission. I... want... it...." There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness.
"Must you marry, Dodong?"
Dodong resented his father's questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.
"You are very young, Dodong."
"I'm... seventeen."
"That's very young to get married at."
"I... I want to marry...Teang's a good girl."
"Tell your mother," his father said.
"You tell her, tatay."
"Dodong, you tell your inay."
"You tell her."
"All right, Dodong."
"You will let me marry Teang?"
"Son, if that is your wish... of course..." There was a strange helpless light in his father's eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream....
-------------------------------------------
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.
In a few moments he would be a father. "Father, father," he whispered the word with awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable... "Your son," people would soon be telling him. "Your son, Dodong."
Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children... What made him think that? What was the matter with him? God!
He heard his mother's voice from the house:
"Come up, Dodong. It is over."
Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.
"Dodong," his mother called again. "Dodong."
He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.
"It is a boy," his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents' eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp.
He wanted to hide from them, to run away.
"Dodong, you come up. You come up," he mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.
"Dodong. Dodong."
"I'll... come up."
Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.
His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.
"Son," his father said.
And his mother: "Dodong..."
How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.
"Teang?" Dodong said.
"She's sleeping. But you go on..."
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me," Dodong said.
-------------------------------------------
Blas was not Dodong's only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong...
Dodong whom life had made ugly.
One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He w anted to be wise about many things.
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth's dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken... after Love.
Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas's steps, for he could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.
"You better go to sleep. It is late," Dodong said.
Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.
Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.
"Itay ...," Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
"I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight."
Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.
"Itay, you think it over."
Dodong lay silent.
"I love Tona and... I want her."
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.
"You want to marry Tona," Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard...
"Yes."
"Must you marry?"
Blas's voice stilled with resentment. "I will marry Tona."
Dodong kept silent, hurt.
"You have objections, Itay?" Blas asked acridly.
"Son... n-none..." (But truly, God, I don't want Blas to marry yet... not yet. I don't want Blas to marry yet....)
But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph... now. Love must triumph... now. Afterwards... it will be life.
As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong... and then Life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.
1896 by Aurelio Alvero
The cry awoke Balintawak
And the echoes answered back…
“Freedom”!
All the four winds listened long
To the shrieking of that song….
“Freedom”!
I heard it from the planters in the vales…
I heard it from the traders tying bales…
I heard it where the fishers strike their sails…
“Freedom”!
Every poet struck his lyre
With those burning notes of fire…
“Freedom”!
All the women knelt to pray
In their hearts that frenzied lay…
“Freedom”!
E’en the children and the old
Took to arms and shouted bold
“Freedom”!
I heard it from the huskers’ neath the trees…
I heard it from the divers of the sea…
I heard it from the pounders in the leas…
“Freedom”!
All the people raised the cry
Fearing not to bleed or die…
“Freedom”!
Up the mountain, down the plain,
Louder, louder rang the strain
“Freedom”!
All the tombs of slave and sire
Broke to voice that great desire…
“Freedom”!
I heard it from the makers of the brooms…
I heard it from the weavers at their looms…
I heard it from the smoking smithy rooms.
“Freedom”!
From the temples, from the shrines,
From the bosom of the mines…
“Freedom”!
Kris and bolo flashed in light,
Thunder-voices air did smite…
“Freedom”!
Muscles sound and spirit strong
Broke the chains with metal song.
“Freedom”!
I heard it in the bullet’s whine and roar…
I heard it in the farthest islet shore…
I heard it and shall hear it ever more…
“Freedom”!
And the echoes answered back…
“Freedom”!
All the four winds listened long
To the shrieking of that song….
“Freedom”!
I heard it from the planters in the vales…
I heard it from the traders tying bales…
I heard it where the fishers strike their sails…
“Freedom”!
Every poet struck his lyre
With those burning notes of fire…
“Freedom”!
All the women knelt to pray
In their hearts that frenzied lay…
“Freedom”!
E’en the children and the old
Took to arms and shouted bold
“Freedom”!
I heard it from the huskers’ neath the trees…
I heard it from the divers of the sea…
I heard it from the pounders in the leas…
“Freedom”!
All the people raised the cry
Fearing not to bleed or die…
“Freedom”!
Up the mountain, down the plain,
Louder, louder rang the strain
“Freedom”!
All the tombs of slave and sire
Broke to voice that great desire…
“Freedom”!
I heard it from the makers of the brooms…
I heard it from the weavers at their looms…
I heard it from the smoking smithy rooms.
“Freedom”!
From the temples, from the shrines,
From the bosom of the mines…
“Freedom”!
Kris and bolo flashed in light,
Thunder-voices air did smite…
“Freedom”!
Muscles sound and spirit strong
Broke the chains with metal song.
“Freedom”!
I heard it in the bullet’s whine and roar…
I heard it in the farthest islet shore…
I heard it and shall hear it ever more…
“Freedom”!
To the Filipino Youth by Jose Rizal
Unfold, oh timid flower !
Lift up your radiant brow,
This day, Youth of my native strand !
Your abounding talents show
Resplendently and grand,
Fair hope of my Motherland !
Soar high, oh genius great,
And with noble thoughts fill their mind;
The honor's glorious seat,
May their virgin mind fly and find
More rapidly than the wind.
Descend with the pleasing light
Of the arts and sciences to the plain,
Oh Youth, and break forthright
The links of the heavy chain
That your poetic genius enchain.
See that in the ardent zone,
The Spaniard, where shadows stand,
Doth offer a shining crown,
With wise and merciful hand
To the son of this Indian land.
You, who heavenward rise
On wings of your rich fantasy,
Seek in the Olympian skies
The tenderest poesy,
More sweet than divine honey;
You of heavenly harmony,
On a calm unperturbed night,
Philomel's match in melody,
That in varied symphony
Dissipate man's sorrow's blight;
You at th' impulse of your mind
The hard rock animate
And your mind with great pow'r consigned
Transformed into immortal state
The pure mem'ry of genius great;
And you, who with magic brush
On canvas plain capture
The varied charm of Phoebus,
Loved by the divine Apelles,
And the mantle of Nature;
Run ! For genius' sacred flame
Awaits the artist's crowning
Spreading far and wide the fame
Throughout the sphere proclaiming
With trumpet the mortal's name
Oh, joyful, joyful day,
The Almighty blessed be
Who, with loving eagerness
Sends you luck and happiness
Lift up your radiant brow,
This day, Youth of my native strand !
Your abounding talents show
Resplendently and grand,
Fair hope of my Motherland !
Soar high, oh genius great,
And with noble thoughts fill their mind;
The honor's glorious seat,
May their virgin mind fly and find
More rapidly than the wind.
Descend with the pleasing light
Of the arts and sciences to the plain,
Oh Youth, and break forthright
The links of the heavy chain
That your poetic genius enchain.
See that in the ardent zone,
The Spaniard, where shadows stand,
Doth offer a shining crown,
With wise and merciful hand
To the son of this Indian land.
You, who heavenward rise
On wings of your rich fantasy,
Seek in the Olympian skies
The tenderest poesy,
More sweet than divine honey;
You of heavenly harmony,
On a calm unperturbed night,
Philomel's match in melody,
That in varied symphony
Dissipate man's sorrow's blight;
You at th' impulse of your mind
The hard rock animate
And your mind with great pow'r consigned
Transformed into immortal state
The pure mem'ry of genius great;
And you, who with magic brush
On canvas plain capture
The varied charm of Phoebus,
Loved by the divine Apelles,
And the mantle of Nature;
Run ! For genius' sacred flame
Awaits the artist's crowning
Spreading far and wide the fame
Throughout the sphere proclaiming
With trumpet the mortal's name
Oh, joyful, joyful day,
The Almighty blessed be
Who, with loving eagerness
Sends you luck and happiness
Tanka
TANKA
Translated by Arthur Waley
/The Priest Hakutsu (c.704)
O pine tree standing
At the side of the stone house,
When I look at you,
It is like seeing face to face
The men of old time.
/Otomo No Tabito (665-731)
To sit silent
And look wise
Is not to be compared with
Drinking sake
And making a riotous shouting.
/Yakamochi
(These) meetings in dreams,
How sad they are!
When walking up startled
One gropes about –
And there is no contact to the hand.
/Hitomaro
May the men who are born
From my time onwards
Never, never meet
With a path of love-making
Such as mine has been!
/Ki No Akimine (9th century)
The beloved person must I think
Have entered
The summer mountain
For the cuckoo is singing
With a louder note.
/Anonymous
They say there is
A still pool even in the middle of
The rushing whirlpool, -
Why is there none in the whirlpool of my love?
/Ono No Yoshiki
My love
Is like the grasses
Hidden in the deep mountain:
Though its abundance increases,
There is none that knows.
Translated by Arthur Waley
/The Priest Hakutsu (c.704)
O pine tree standing
At the side of the stone house,
When I look at you,
It is like seeing face to face
The men of old time.
/Otomo No Tabito (665-731)
To sit silent
And look wise
Is not to be compared with
Drinking sake
And making a riotous shouting.
/Yakamochi
(These) meetings in dreams,
How sad they are!
When walking up startled
One gropes about –
And there is no contact to the hand.
/Hitomaro
May the men who are born
From my time onwards
Never, never meet
With a path of love-making
Such as mine has been!
/Ki No Akimine (9th century)
The beloved person must I think
Have entered
The summer mountain
For the cuckoo is singing
With a louder note.
/Anonymous
They say there is
A still pool even in the middle of
The rushing whirlpool, -
Why is there none in the whirlpool of my love?
/Ono No Yoshiki
My love
Is like the grasses
Hidden in the deep mountain:
Though its abundance increases,
There is none that knows.
Haiku
HAIKU
Translated by Harold G. Henderson
Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694)
Many, many things
They bring to mind –
Cherry blossoms.
On a withered branch
A crow has settled –
Autumn nightfall.
Around existence twine
(Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!)
ropes of twisted vine.
Cool it is, and still:
Just the tip of a crescent moon
Over Black-wing Hill.
The summer grasses grow.
Of mighty warriors’ splendid dreams
the afterglow.
Old pond:
Frog-jump-in
water-sound.
A village where they ring
no bells! - Oh what they do
at dusk in spring?
Some of them with staves,
and white-haired – a whole family
visiting the graves!
Fall of the night
Over the sea – the wild duck voices
Shadowy and white
No rice? – In that hour
We put into the gourd
A maiden-flower.
A lightning-gleam:
Into darkness travels
A night-heron’s scream.
Taniguchi Buson ((1715-1783)
Spring rain! And as yet
The little froglets’ bellies
Haven’t got wet!
No poem you send
In answer – O, young lady!
Spring is at its end.
Blossoms on the pear;
And a woman in the moonlight
Reads a letter there…
What piercing cold I feel!
My dead wife’ comb, in our bedroom,
Under my heel.
Translated by Harold G. Henderson
Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694)
Many, many things
They bring to mind –
Cherry blossoms.
On a withered branch
A crow has settled –
Autumn nightfall.
Around existence twine
(Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!)
ropes of twisted vine.
Cool it is, and still:
Just the tip of a crescent moon
Over Black-wing Hill.
The summer grasses grow.
Of mighty warriors’ splendid dreams
the afterglow.
Old pond:
Frog-jump-in
water-sound.
A village where they ring
no bells! - Oh what they do
at dusk in spring?
Some of them with staves,
and white-haired – a whole family
visiting the graves!
Fall of the night
Over the sea – the wild duck voices
Shadowy and white
No rice? – In that hour
We put into the gourd
A maiden-flower.
A lightning-gleam:
Into darkness travels
A night-heron’s scream.
Taniguchi Buson ((1715-1783)
Spring rain! And as yet
The little froglets’ bellies
Haven’t got wet!
No poem you send
In answer – O, young lady!
Spring is at its end.
Blossoms on the pear;
And a woman in the moonlight
Reads a letter there…
What piercing cold I feel!
My dead wife’ comb, in our bedroom,
Under my heel.
The Spider's Thread by Ryunosoke Akutagawa
The Spider’s Thread [Akutagawa Ryunosuke]
One day, the Buddha was strolling alone along the edge of a lotus pond in Paradise. The blooming lotus flowers in the pond were each pure white like jewels, and the place was filled with the indescribably wondrous fragrance continually emitted from each flower’s golden center. It was just morning in Paradise.
After a time, the Buddha paused at the edge of the pond and from between the lotus leaves that covered it saw a glimpse of the state of things below. Now this celestial pond just happened to lie directly over Hell, and peering through that crystal-clear water was like looking through a magnifying glass at the River of Death and the Mountain of Needles and such.
The Buddha saw there, in the depths of Hell, a single man writhing along with the other sinners. This man was named Kandata, and he had been a notorious thief who had performed murder and arson and other acts of evil. In his past, however, he had performed just one good deed: one day, when walking through the deep forest, he saw a spider crawling along the road. At first he raised his foot to crush it, but suddenly he changed his mind and stopped, saying, “No, small though it may be, a spider, too, has life. It would be a pity to meaninglessly end it,” and so did not kill it.
Looking down upon the captives in Hell the Buddha recalled this kind act that Kandata had performed, and thought to use his good deed as a way to save him from his fate. Looking aside, there on a jade-colored lotus leaf he saw a single spider, spinning out a web of silver thread. The Buddha carefully took the spider’s thread into his hand, and lowered it straight down between the jewel-like white lotuses into the depths of Hell.
TWO
Kandata was floating and sinking along with the other sinners in the Lake of Blood at the bottom of Hell. It was pitch black no matter which way he looked, and the occasional glimpse of light that he would see in the darkness would turn out to be just the glint of the terrible Mountain of Needles. How lonely he must have felt! All about him was the silence of the grave, the only occasional sound being a faint sigh from one of the damned. Those who were so evil as to be sent to this place were tired by its various torments, and left without even the strength to cry out. Even the great thief Kandata could only squirm like a dying frog as he choked in the Lake of Blood.
But one day, raising up his head and glancing at the sky above the lake, in the empty darkness Kandata saw a silver spider’s thread being lowered from the ceiling so far, far away. The thread seemed almost afraid to be seen, emitting a frail, constant light as it came down to just above Kandata’s head. Seeing this, Kandata couldn’t help but clap his hands in joy. If he were to cling to this thread and climb up it, he may be able to climb out of Hell! Perhaps he could even climb all the way to Paradise! Then he would never be chased up the Mountain of Needles, nor drowned in the Lake of Blood again.
Thinking so, he firmly grasped the spider’s thread with both hands and began to climb the thread, higher and higher. Having once been a great thief, he was used to tasks such as this. But the distance between Hell and Paradise is tens of thousands of miles, and so it would seem that no amount of effort would make this an easy journey. After climbing for some time Kandata tired, and couldn’t climb a bit higher. Having no other recourse, he hung there from the thread, resting, and while doing so looked down below.
He saw that he had made a good deal of progress. The Lake of Blood that he had been trapped in was now hidden in the dark below, and he had even climbed higher than the dimly glowing Mountain of Needles. If he could keep up this pace, perhaps he could escape from Hell after all. Kandata grasped the thread with both hands, and laughingly spoke in a voice that he hadn’t used in the many years since he had come here, “I’ve done it! I’ve done it!”
Looking down, however, what did he see but an endless queue of sinners, intently following him up the thread like a line of ants! Seeing this, surprise and fear kept Kandata hanging there for a time with mouth open and eyes blinking like a fool. How could this slender spider’s web, which should break even under just his weight, support the weight of all these other people? If the thread were to snap, all of his effort would be wasted and he would fall back into Hell with the others! That just would not do. But even as he thought these thoughts, hundreds more, thousands more of the damned came crawling up from the Lake of Blood, forming a line and scurrying up the thread. If he didn’t do something fast, surely the thread would snap in the middle and he would fall back down.
Kandata shouted out, “Hey! You sinners! This thread is mine! Who said you could climb up it? Get off! Get off!”
Though the thread had been fine until just then, with these words it snapped with a twang right where Kandata held it. Poor Kandata fell headfirst through the air, spinning like a top, right down through the darkness. The severed end of the silver thread hung there, suspended from heaven, shining with its pale light in that moonless, starless sky.
THREE
The Buddha stood in Paradise at the edge of the lotus pond, silently watching these events. After Kandata sank like a stone to the bottom of the Lake of Blood, he continued his stroll with a sad face. He must have been surprised that even after such severe punishment Kandata’s lack of compassion would lead him right back into Hell.
Yet the lotus blossoms in the lotus ponds of Paradise care nothing about such matters. Their jewel-like white flowers waved about the feet of the Buddha, and each flower’s golden center continuously filled the place with their indescribably wondrous fragrance. It was almost noon in Paradise.
One day, the Buddha was strolling alone along the edge of a lotus pond in Paradise. The blooming lotus flowers in the pond were each pure white like jewels, and the place was filled with the indescribably wondrous fragrance continually emitted from each flower’s golden center. It was just morning in Paradise.
After a time, the Buddha paused at the edge of the pond and from between the lotus leaves that covered it saw a glimpse of the state of things below. Now this celestial pond just happened to lie directly over Hell, and peering through that crystal-clear water was like looking through a magnifying glass at the River of Death and the Mountain of Needles and such.
The Buddha saw there, in the depths of Hell, a single man writhing along with the other sinners. This man was named Kandata, and he had been a notorious thief who had performed murder and arson and other acts of evil. In his past, however, he had performed just one good deed: one day, when walking through the deep forest, he saw a spider crawling along the road. At first he raised his foot to crush it, but suddenly he changed his mind and stopped, saying, “No, small though it may be, a spider, too, has life. It would be a pity to meaninglessly end it,” and so did not kill it.
Looking down upon the captives in Hell the Buddha recalled this kind act that Kandata had performed, and thought to use his good deed as a way to save him from his fate. Looking aside, there on a jade-colored lotus leaf he saw a single spider, spinning out a web of silver thread. The Buddha carefully took the spider’s thread into his hand, and lowered it straight down between the jewel-like white lotuses into the depths of Hell.
TWO
Kandata was floating and sinking along with the other sinners in the Lake of Blood at the bottom of Hell. It was pitch black no matter which way he looked, and the occasional glimpse of light that he would see in the darkness would turn out to be just the glint of the terrible Mountain of Needles. How lonely he must have felt! All about him was the silence of the grave, the only occasional sound being a faint sigh from one of the damned. Those who were so evil as to be sent to this place were tired by its various torments, and left without even the strength to cry out. Even the great thief Kandata could only squirm like a dying frog as he choked in the Lake of Blood.
But one day, raising up his head and glancing at the sky above the lake, in the empty darkness Kandata saw a silver spider’s thread being lowered from the ceiling so far, far away. The thread seemed almost afraid to be seen, emitting a frail, constant light as it came down to just above Kandata’s head. Seeing this, Kandata couldn’t help but clap his hands in joy. If he were to cling to this thread and climb up it, he may be able to climb out of Hell! Perhaps he could even climb all the way to Paradise! Then he would never be chased up the Mountain of Needles, nor drowned in the Lake of Blood again.
Thinking so, he firmly grasped the spider’s thread with both hands and began to climb the thread, higher and higher. Having once been a great thief, he was used to tasks such as this. But the distance between Hell and Paradise is tens of thousands of miles, and so it would seem that no amount of effort would make this an easy journey. After climbing for some time Kandata tired, and couldn’t climb a bit higher. Having no other recourse, he hung there from the thread, resting, and while doing so looked down below.
He saw that he had made a good deal of progress. The Lake of Blood that he had been trapped in was now hidden in the dark below, and he had even climbed higher than the dimly glowing Mountain of Needles. If he could keep up this pace, perhaps he could escape from Hell after all. Kandata grasped the thread with both hands, and laughingly spoke in a voice that he hadn’t used in the many years since he had come here, “I’ve done it! I’ve done it!”
Looking down, however, what did he see but an endless queue of sinners, intently following him up the thread like a line of ants! Seeing this, surprise and fear kept Kandata hanging there for a time with mouth open and eyes blinking like a fool. How could this slender spider’s web, which should break even under just his weight, support the weight of all these other people? If the thread were to snap, all of his effort would be wasted and he would fall back into Hell with the others! That just would not do. But even as he thought these thoughts, hundreds more, thousands more of the damned came crawling up from the Lake of Blood, forming a line and scurrying up the thread. If he didn’t do something fast, surely the thread would snap in the middle and he would fall back down.
Kandata shouted out, “Hey! You sinners! This thread is mine! Who said you could climb up it? Get off! Get off!”
Though the thread had been fine until just then, with these words it snapped with a twang right where Kandata held it. Poor Kandata fell headfirst through the air, spinning like a top, right down through the darkness. The severed end of the silver thread hung there, suspended from heaven, shining with its pale light in that moonless, starless sky.
THREE
The Buddha stood in Paradise at the edge of the lotus pond, silently watching these events. After Kandata sank like a stone to the bottom of the Lake of Blood, he continued his stroll with a sad face. He must have been surprised that even after such severe punishment Kandata’s lack of compassion would lead him right back into Hell.
Yet the lotus blossoms in the lotus ponds of Paradise care nothing about such matters. Their jewel-like white flowers waved about the feet of the Buddha, and each flower’s golden center continuously filled the place with their indescribably wondrous fragrance. It was almost noon in Paradise.
Hamlet's Soliloquy
HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
-- William Shakespeare
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
-- William Shakespeare
The Nymph's Reply by Sir Walter Raleigh
IF all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
But Time drives flocks from field to fold;
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward Winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither—soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,—
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy Love.
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
But Time drives flocks from field to fold;
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward Winter reckoning yields:
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither—soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,—
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy Love.
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant poises,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds's swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant poises,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds's swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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