NOTES TO JOSEFINO ZABALA, EX-FUTURE NATIONALIST WRITER*

All rights reserved

Aristocratic fingers
neither walk the yellow pages
     of history.
Nor do they feel the pulse
of the now-barren country
whose impatient offsprings
have gone away, lost
in the wombs of other lands.
Only those who know songs
of rice birds come back,
retracing spoors of wild pigs
that, too, have disappeared 
with the great forests.
They have sought refuge
in the arms of strange towns,
their souls an arid desert.
The temple in the sun
shall haunt them surely.
And the longing knows no end:
Who will miss the cool hills
of Sagada and Samoki?

2.

Speak not of virgin springs
For remembering is painful
adventure to where once stood
green mansions of rock:
The tomb is only an aberration of fools
   and we are scions
   of a deathless tree.
Let us not go back
and die slowly, a gumamela
Pinned against our cheek.

3.

More brown gods now stalk
the brown earth but who will heed
the multitude whose combined voices
are as weak as the flow
of Padsan and the dying rivers?
And who are the heroes?
Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio
And even the Lunas--they, too, had
their own tales that are as authentic
as the white sands of Saud in Pagudpud.
They who mouth slogans
and make comparisons
desecrate their memories
and tinge with black
their shining dignity.
My friend, the race 
must go on, untouched
by the tongues of fire throwers
and the politicians.

*Included in the anthology of Ilokano-English poems, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger"