English poems

A BIRD WINGING TO ROOST

I looked out to the sea at dusk

Gazing at the setting sun,

A bit mesmerized by birds that flew

Westward (like dreams fatigued by long flight)

And now winging laboriously to roost.

I winced as I saw the rays grew pale

As if they vaporized into clouds

To cover the thinning ozone layer—

Fearlessly hugging the greenhouse gases

To defecate the anthroponic scourge of mankind.

The cheeks of the high tide-water have grown haggard,

The ocean’s breast has grown ice-cold;

The restless waves that wooed the rocks

Alas! Become tsunamis with deathly hug!

The panorama slowly fades away

From the dimming eyes of ancient fear—

Fear of the imponderables—

Where stakes that once stood as fish traps

Are now abandoned crosses in the rushing dusk.

When I gazed once more at the sun a-setting

What seemed to shudder, specter of my own shadow;

Emaciated hands that were once sturdy wings

That carried me up to Mt. Parnassus

(Where poets pay homage to the gods)

Now slowly closing, clutching

The twilight by its claws.

Written on Earth Day, April 2007

(Twenty five years after I retired

As editor-in-chief

Of Liwayway magazine)

IMPRESSIONS AT PARK AND WILDLIFE

ON BONIFACIO DAY, 1974

You arrived unheralded,

An uninvited guest at a lunch for two,

Under wild trees that sway

To the nearby cages of crying monkeys

Lamenting their lost freedom.

I felt your presence

In the absence of words—echoed by zephyr

Murmurring the pains of distant hills

That court the nearby lagoon.

Are you unwelcome

‘cause you disturb the tranquility

Of my heart recuperating from fresh wound?

Or you are welcome ‘cause you spur me

to make another try—that I may retrieve

my lost faith in love sincere?

The lunch for two was consummated,

The monkeys are still crying in their cages,

The distant hills are still courting the lagoon,

And I am still looking for a true love.

Phillipine Panorama

December 14, 1974