Songs of War Patriots  

By Tomasito T. Talledo
Posted by Bulatlat

                    I.

Hear from us what is poetry

It’s the ashes of dead comrades,

Sounds of arms in howling plains

                                                   For

When verses are camaraderie –

Of people and fighters in soldiery

Then death awards sublime beauty

                                                    To us

An encounter with the enemy is poetry.

When scaling the mountain’s skull

We drink danger heartily

                                                     So sweetly

We march where our bodies may fall,

 Poetry is an encounter with the enemy.

                    II.

Visitors in hive of earthen women

                                                      We grieve

For wombs dried, emptied and barren

Of sires slaughtered in struggles

Of sons swallowed in battles.

Whisperers however exult this war

Perfumed with blood of warriors

                                                      We are

Who vowed to vanquish twilight idols

That feed on our noble seeds.

                                                        Listen now

Though false heroes salve our silenced scars

Still we resist alien anthems and elect

To cuddle ancestral guns in secret hive

Of earthen women moaning our periled oath.

                       III.

Mother’s trembling lips speak the news,

“We are in the state of war,

no more time for supplication

but courage to meet most

                                                        honest death.”

Our folks quietly steeled themselves.

“We march with our wounded woes,” daughters cried.

Among sons who lost their father’s lonely eyes

Whet our oaths to cut down coming

                                                         enemies.

Without bourgeois romance with nullity,

The poets built the longest barricades.

Since there are no more lusts to confess,

Neither lies nor cowardice to publish.

Struck the noon hour of our

                                                         Exultation

With the widows and the hills we gird

Ourselves to receive the full flowering

Of the Songs of the War Patriots.

Posted by Bulatlat

*Nota bene:

This is the final poetic version; an early draft was published in Diliman Review years ago.

Tomasito T. Talledo is a Social Science faculty member of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Miag-ao Campus and also a member of CONTEND-UP.