POETRY
Invisible II
(For the Philippine
indigenous peoples)
BY CHERYL
DAYTEC-YAŃGOT
Posted by
Bulatlat
We were born rich in an abundant land.
Then they saw us and all of a sudden
We were invisible. They did not see us
when they came to vandalize the burial
grounds of our ancestors to herald the
fabrication of counterfeit lakes and
rivers
with strong flux to command brightness
for faraway places they called
civilization.
We looked at our future – it was dark.
We were invisible. They did not see us
when they came with their bulldozers
and made plains of our mountains, our
home and refuge for millions of years.
In the sacrosanct name of development,
they erected chateaus for the bourgeois.
We looked at our home – it was gone.
We were invisible. They did not see us
when with supercilious air, they flounced
into our florid forest thieving her coins
and
jewelry; she is now void inside,
threadbare
on the surface, dumped by false gods who
wallow in the brimming briny of her
wealth.
We looked at ourselves – we were poor.
We are the people whose life is the land
The land is departed; so are we demised.
We flounder in the miasma of destitution.
Our invisibility was our strong impotence.
Our invisibility was our victorious
defeat.
Our visibility is our campaign against
invisibility.
Posted by Bulatlat
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