POETRY

Invisible II

(For the Philippine indigenous peoples)

BY CHERYL DAYTEC-YAÑGOT

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

© 2006 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Media Center

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