Monday, September 5, 2011

Like the Molave (Rafael Zulueta da Costa)

I.
Not yet, rizal, not yet. Sleep not in peace:
There are a thousand waters to be spanned;
There are a thousand mountains to be crossed;
There are a thousand crosses to be borne.
Our shoulders are not strong; our sinews are
Grown flaccid with dependence, smug with ease
Under another’s wing. Rest not in peace;
Not yet, Rizal, not yet. The land has need
Of young blood-and, what younger than your own,
Forever spilled in the great name of freedom,
Forever oblate on the altar of
The free? Not you alone, Rizal. O souls
And spirits of the martyred brave, arise!
Arise and scour the land! Shed once again
Your willing blood! Infuse the vibrant red
Into our thin anaemic veins; until
We pick up your Promethean tools and, strong,
Out of the depthless matrix of your of your faith
In us, and on the silent cliffs of freedom,
We carve for all time your marmoreal dream!
Until our people, seeing, are become
Like the molave, firm, resilent, staunch,
Rising on the hillside, unafraid,
Strong in its own fibre, yes, like the molave!

II.
The youth of the land is a proud and noble appellation,
The youth of the land is a panoramic poem,
The youth of the land is a book of paradoxes,
The youth of the land is a pat on one’s back,
The youth of the land is a huge canvas of spectral colors,
The youth of the land is an epic tragedy-comedy,
The youth of the land is a crashing symphony,
The youth of the land is a child grown old in tears,
The youth of the land is an old man laughing through a perpetual infancy;
A bastard child of a thousand dreams, masquerading and dancing,
The youth of the land.

III.
We, the Filipinos of today, are soft,
Easy-going, parasitic, frivolous,
Inconstant, indolent, inefficient.

Would you have me sugarcoat you?

I would be happier to shower praise upon
My countrymen…but let us be realists…
Let us strip ourselves

Youth of the land, you are a bitter pill to swallow.

This is a testament of the youth borne on the four pacific winds;
This is a parable of seed four ways sown in stone;
This is a chip not only on the President’s shoulder:
The nation of our fathers shivers with longing expectation.

Shall we, sons and daughters, brother youths of the land,
Walk up new and forever knock the flirting chip off?
Or will the nation of our fathers be forever and forever
Lighting candles in the wind?

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