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

[Works by Philippine prisoners]

The Coming of the Rain

go not gently into the might; rage rage against of the light

Gathered by the oppressive heat
Heavy clouds darken all beneath.
But thunder and lightning proclaim
A new season of growth in the rain.

The wide wind and deepening stream
Race from the mountain to bring
The message in a more intimate way.
The coming of the rain to the plains.

The trees raise their arms to the sky
And dance in a movement so spright.
The bushes raise and blend their voices
With the trees in song and laughter.

The wind sweeps away the fallen leaves
And fans the spark on the stubbly field.
The flames leap and whet the thirst
Of the earth so eager for the water thrusts.

Jose Maria Sison

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.

Grassfire

It only took seconds, the end
Of fieldgrass teeming: it was a spark
On the hillsides, a firetongue
That began as a tease to the cogon maddened by summer.
Gusts swept in, swishing through
The blades: then the fury
Became unquenchable fire
Leaping up to the trees.
Black and white were the billows
Taking the place of clouds, as flames
Spindled and swooshed across the fields
Turning carbon desolate,' a blighted land
More wasted, serer than before.
The raging curse smouldered
All in its path, until a mutual farewell
Crackled between grass and thatch;
Charred, in no time, was the stonewall
Bounding the world where I stood.
And the grassfire sputtered out, yet I
Continued to feel the whole season's heat
Upon my face, and in my eyes
Where I stood inside the cell.

Edgar Maranan

Drawing of a fiery dove

1 a vicious torture used by the Chilean military

2 female comrade