Be Beautiful, Noble, Like the Antique Ant

Jose G. Villa
Be beautiful, noble, like the antique ant,
Who bore the storms as he bore the sun,
Wearing neither gown nor helmet,
though he was archbishop and soldier:
Wore only his own flesh
Salute characters with gracious dignity:
Though what these are is left to
Your own terms. Exact: the universe is
Not so small but these will be found
Somewhere. Exact: they will be found
Speak with great moderation: but think
With great fierceness, burning passion:
Though what the ant thought
No annuals reveal, no his descendants
Break the seal.
Trace the tracelessness of the ant,
Every ant has reached this perfection.
As he comes, so he goes,
Flowing as water flows,
Essential but secret like a rose.

The Song of Maria Clara

Jose P. Rizal
Sweet the hours in the native country,
where friendly shines the sun above!
Life is the breeze that sweeps the meadows;
tranquil is death; most tender, love.
Warm kisses on the lips are playing
as we awake to mother's face:
the arms are seeking to embrace her,
the eyes are smiling as they gaze.
How sweet to die for the native country,
where friendly shines the sun above!
Death is the breeze for him who has
no country, no mother, and no love!

Love of Country
Andres Bonifacio

From joyful, restless childhood

Till the grave receives the body.

Is there any love that is nobler

Purer and more sublime
Than the love of the native country?
What love is? Certainly none.

The times gone-by of gladness

And the day to come that we sigh for
When the yoke shall be taken from us:
What are they but dreams of the patriot?

Though the mind may not cease reflecting

And sifting with perseverance
What humanity has printed and written:
That will be the result, none other.

And every tree and branchlet

Of its woods and its laughing meadows,
Bring back to the mind the memory
Of the mother and past days of gladness.

Sacred love! when thou reignest

In a loyal heart, be it even
A plebeian's, a rustic's untutored
Thou makest it grand and revered.

Its crystalline cooling waters

That flow from the springs in the mountains,
The soft murmur of swift current
Are balm to the heart that is drooping.

To give the fatherland boundless honor

Is the purpose of all who are worthy
And who sing, or compose, or make verses
To spread their country's glory.

Unhappy the exile from his country!

His mind, full of sad recollections,
Is haunted by anxious longing
For the land where stood his cradle.

There is nothing worth having the patriot

Will not give for his native land:
Blood and wealth, and knowledge and
effort,
Even life, to be crushed and taken.

Misfortune and death seem lighter

When we suffer them for our country,
And the more that for it we suffer,
The more our love grows - oh, marvel!

Why? What thing of infinite greatness

Is this, that all knees should be bended
Before it? that it should be held higher
Than the things most precious, even life?
Ah! the land it is that gave us birth,
Like a mother, and from her alone
Came the pleasant rays like the sun's
That warmed the benumbed body.
To her we owe the first breath
That enlivened the breast oppressed
And smothered in the abyss
Of pain and grievous suffering.
With the love of country are coupled
All dreams and all ideals,

If our land with danger is threatened

And help must be quickly forthcoming,
Children, wife, and parents and brothers
At her first call we must abandon.
And if our land, Filipinas,
Is offended, and outraged her honor
And her dignity into the mire
Is dragged by the foreign impostor:
Will by boundless grief not invaded
Be the heart of the Filipino?
And will not the most peaceful even
Rise to avenge her honor?
And whence will it come, the vengeance,
The sacrifice of our life blood,

If at the end of the struggle,

We shall fall into cruel bondage?
If to her fall and prostration
Into the mire of fraud and derision
Will be added the lash and the shackles,
Naught being left her but mourning?
Who is there whom her condition
Will not fill the soul with sorrow?
Will the heart most hardened by treachery
Not be moved to give her its life blood?
Will not, perchance, her sorrow
Drive the Filipinos to come to the rescue
Of the mother in agony, trampled
Underfoot by the foe disgusting?
Where is Filipino honor?
Where the blood that must be set flowing?
Their country in peril - why passive?
Will they calmly see her suffer?
Come ye, who have been living
Of future felicity dreaming,
And have tasted naught but sorrow,
Come, love your unhappy country.

To My Native Land
Trinidad T. Subido
Beloved Land, let me explain thee
Why thought of nearing death provokes a pain;
'Tis not that I again shall never see
These Orient Isles of kindly sun and rain;
Not that the visionary spirit must
Forego the wonders she had fondly schemed;
Not that the flesh must soon succumb to dust,
With the Love's avowals only half redeemed.
O my beloved land, whose air I breath,
Whose bounty is my daily sustenance,
How sad to leave with nothing to bequeath,
How shameful, finally, to dare to rest

Ye, in whom the struggling desire

Has dried the springs of the bosom,
May true love again be born in you
And flow for your suffering country.
Ye, who have lost the fruit and the flower
Of the trees of this life, withered early
By so many perplexing sorrows,
Revive and succor your country.
Ye, who are propitious victims
Of deceit and bestial rigor,
Arise now to save your country,
Free her from the claws of the traitor!
Ye, wretches, who nothing demanded
But to live 'midst sorrows and torments,
Strike a blow to save your country,
Since she is our common mother.
Unto her in holocaust loving
The last drop of your blood you must offer,
If to free her your life you have given,
Yours is glory then and redemption.

My thankful dust upon thy noble breast!

Thy weal to serve, Thy glory to enhance.
Beggar Children
Emmanuel Torres
Wherever they go, skies looking after them
Remain lean ghosts of killer kites.
Even their cloths have the ripholes of kites
Caught raving among high electric branches.
Playgrounds they wander in are condemned
By the fat book of proverbs: games have abandoned them.
They trail the tracks of sparrows slingshot
Would stone down, live, into their dreamless hands.
Shreds of nests, windstruck, straw their hair.
When they speak, plucking the high sleeves of strangers
Beyond reach of sweat crowding their brows,
It is all a hopscotch make-do language.
Reaped from wall of liberal graffiti
(Colorum profiles, amulet signals, pistols
Pointed at hunger shaped like purse of hairy mouth)
Patrolled by the shadow of a carnal cop.
Their eyes, alert, are blacker than shadow
They spill about them and loose in crowded noons.
Catch-as-catch-can is what their fingers learn
From hoops of skinny thorns: thus they survive.
If between the billboard siren and the rainy highway
Their eyes fall on pebbles, their wishes are not
For marbles gleaming with rainbow swirls of heaven
But for hubcaps to take to as far as the next possible town.
When I See a Barong-Barong
Maximo Ramos
When I see a barong-barong neighborhood in the heart of war-torn Manila;
When I behold beside the Pasig sudden lean-tos defended against sun and rain with salvaged
sheets of tin;
When I take a truck ride through Suburbia and find nipa huts clustered within the shell-punched
walls of former mansions of stone
I do not look away in shame or throw up my hands despairing for my people.
I fill my chest with the bracing breeze of this my country and say:
Though my race has been pushed around in his own land for nearly half a thousand years,
Though my people have been double-crossed again and again by foreigners,
Though my race has been pitted against themselves down the centuries;
I joy to discover that they are whole and remained unbroken in spirit;

Building them makeshift huts of nipa and salvaged tin and standing straight with heads against
the stars.

WHERE'S THE PATIS?

Carmen Guerrero Nakpil
Travel has become the great Filipino dream. In the same way that an American dreams of
becoming a millionaire or an English boy dreams of going to one of the great universities, the
Filipino dreams of going abroad. His most constant vision is that of himself as tourist.
To visit Hong-kong, Tokyo and other cities of Asia, perchance, to catch a glimpse of Rome,
Paris or London and to go to America (even if only for a week in a fly-specked motel in
California) is the sum of all delights.
Yet having left the Manila International Airport in a pink cloud of despedidas and sampaguita
garlands and pabilin, the dream turns into a nightmare very quickly. But why? Because the first
bastion of the Filipino spirit is the palate. And in all the palaces and fleshpots and skyscrapers of
that magic world called "abroad" there is no patis to be had.
Consider the Pinoy abroad. He has discarded barong tagalong or "polo" for a sleek, dark Western
suit. He takes to the habiliments from Hongkong, Brooks Brothers or Savile Row with the
greatest of ease. He has also shed the casual informality of manner that is characteristically
Filipino. He gives himself the airs of a cosmopolite to the credit-card born. He is extravagantly
courteous (specially in a borrowed language) and has taken to hand-kissing and to plenty of
American "D'you minds?"
He hardly misses the heat, the native accents of Tagalog or Ilongo or the company of his brownskinned cheerful compatriots. He takes, like a duck to water, to the skyscrapers, the temperate
climate, the strange landscape and the fabled refinements of another world. How nice, after all,
to be away from good old R.P. for a change!
But as he sits down to meal, no matter how sumptuous, his heart sinks. His stomach juices, he
discovers, are much less neither as apahap nor lapu-lapu. Tournedos is meat done in a barbarian
way, thick and barely cooked with red juices still oozing out. The safest choice is a steak. If the
Pinoy can get it well done enough and sliced thinly enough, it might remind him of tapa.
If the waiter only knew enough about Philippine cuisine, he might suggest venison which is
really something like tapang usa, or escargots which the unstylish poor on Philippine beaches
know as snails. Or even frog legs which are a Pampango delight.
But this is the crux of the problem - where is the rice? A silver tray offers varieties of bread:
slices of crusty French bread, soft yellow rolls, rye bread, crescents studded with sesame seeds.
There are also potatoes in every conceivable manner, fried, mashed, boiled, buttered. But no rice.

The Pinoy learns that rice is considered a vegetable in Europe and America. The staff of life a
vegetable!
And when it comes - a special order which takes at least half an hour -the grains are large, oval
and foreign-looking and what's more, yellow with butter. And oh horrors! - one must shove it
with a fork or pile it with one's knife on the back of another fork.
After a few days of these debacles, the Pinoy, sick with longing, decides to comb the strange city
for a Chinese restaurant, the closest thing to the beloved gastronomic county. There, in the
company of other Asian exiles, he will put his nose finally in a bowl of rice and find it more
fragrant than an English rose garden, more exciting than a castle on the Rhine and more delicious
than pink champagne.
To go with the rice there is siopao (not so rich as at Salazar) pancit guisado reeking with garlic
(but never so good as any that can be had on the sidewalks of Quiapo) fried lumpia with the
incorrect sauce, and even mami (but nothing like the down-town wanton)
Better than a Chinese restaurant is the kitchen of a kababayan. When in a foreign city, a Pinoy
searches every busy sidewalk, theatre, restaurant for the well-remembered golden features of a
fellow-pinoy. But make it no mistake.

Mi ltimo Adis
Adis, Patria adorada, regin del sol
querida,
Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido
Edn!
A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,
Y fuera ms brillante, ms fresca, ms
florida,
Tambin por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.
En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio,
Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar;
El sitio nada importa, ciprs, laurel o lirio,
Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel
martirio,
Lo mismo es si lo piden la patria y el hogar.
Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora
Y al fin anuncia el da tras lbrego capuz;
si grana necesitas para teir tu aurora,
Vierte la sangre ma, derrmala en buen hora
Y drela un reflejo de su naciente luz.

Mis sueos cuando apenas muchacho

adolescente,
Mis sueos cuando joven ya lleno de vigor,
Fueron el verte un da, joya del mar de
oriente,
Secos los negros ojos, alta la tersa frente,
Sin ceo, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor
Ensueo de mi vida, mi ardiente vivo
anhelo,
Salud te grita el alma que pronto va a
partir!
Salud! Ah, que es hermoso caer por darte
vuelo,
Morir por darte vida, morir bajo tu cielo,
Y en tu encantada tierra la eternidad dormir.
Si sobre mi sepulcro vieres brotar un da
Entre la espesa yerba sencilla, humilde flor,
Acrcala a tus labios y besa al alma ma,
Y sienta yo en mi frente bajo la tumba fra,
De tu ternura el soplo, de tu hlito el calor.
Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y

suave,
Deja que el alba enve su resplandor fugaz,
Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,
Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,
Deja que el ave entone su cntico de paz.
Deja que el sol, ardiendo, las lluvias evapore
Y al cielo tornen puras, con mi clamor en
pos;
Deja que un ser amigo mi fin temprano llore
Y en las serenas tardes cuando por m
alguien ore,
Ora tambin, oh Patria, por mi descanso a
Dios!
Ora por todos cuantos murieron sin ventura,
Por cuantos padecieron tormentos sin igual,
Por nuestras pobres madres que gimen su
amargura;
Por hurfanos y viudas, por presos en tortura
Y ora por ti que veas tu redencin final.
Y cuando en noche oscura se envuelva el
cementerio
Y solos slo muertos queden velando all,
No turbes su reposo, no turbes el misterio,
Tal vez acordes oigas de ctara o salterio,
Soy yo, querida Patria, yo que te canto a ti.

Y cuando ya mi tumba de todos olvidada

No tenga cruz ni piedra que marquen su
lugar,
Deja que la are el hombre, la esparza con la
azada,
Y mis cenizas, antes que vuelvan a la nada,
El polvo de tu alfombra que vayan a formar.
Entonces nada importa me pongas en olvido.
Tu atmsfera, tu espacio, tus valles cruzar.
Vibrante y limpia nota ser para tu odo,
Aroma, luz, colores, rumor, canto, gemido,
Constante repitiendo la esencia de mi fe.
Mi patria idolatrada, dolor de mis dolores,
Querida Filipinas, oye el postrer adis.
Ah te dejo todo, mis padres, mis amores.
Voy donde no hay esclavos, verdugos ni
opresores,
Donde la fe no mata, donde el que reina es
Dios.
Adis, padres y hermanos, trozos del alma
ma,
Amigos de la infancia en el perdido hogar,
Dad gracias que descanso del fatigoso da;
Adis, dulce extranjera, mi amiga, mi
alegra,
Adis, queridos seres, morir es descansar.