Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 5. March 30 1981

To A Woman Poet* — Dying Immortal

To A Woman Poet*

Dying Immortal

yesterday I had a talk
with an old man
who had your eyes -
the same laughing squint
hiding a watchfulness
that catches even hints
of rainbows.

— poem to her comrade

The fronds, without being told, danced in crosses
On a deathground of proud trees and humble hills
And the birds knew when to chirp their elegies.
Even the rocks seemed to be renewing themselves
Angrily, where they had been chipped off
By the violence of lead warring against earth.
Rains poured in January and spirited away
Your blood into the roots of quiet bamboo
And into the headwaters of the lowland brook.
The earth must have felt wonder: This warm body
Has slumped so beautifully, clutching its own
As though in a prophecy of bittersweet reunion.
You had written of lilies in the free undergrowth
Unfolding like the remembered eyes of your love,
Eyes more constant than the glimmer of fireflies
Lilies like torches in a dark season of monsoons.
It may not be so strange, after all, that memories
Of our moment of dying over your unreal death
Persist to haunt us: it was only a second of grief,
And we small need, oh! a brave cycle of lifetimes
To feel your hands in ours, fully hold your spirit
As we follow trails where you planted your flowers.

Edgar Maranan

The woman poet referred to is Lorena Barros, a former student activist and the founder of the first militant feminist organisation in the country She was herself a political prisoner at Canlubang and Ipil She escaped from prison in 1974 and was killed in an encounter by the military in March. 1976.