ARMM- Autunomous Region of Muslim Mindanao

1.) A Lesson for the Sultan

Long ago in Agamaniyog, the best-known, wealthy couple were Solotan sa Agamaniyog and his wife, Ba’i sa Agamaniyog. They were so wealthy that they owned almost half of the land in Agamaniyog. They had large herds of cows, carabaos, and horses. One morning, when the couple went down to the lakeshore to pray, they happened to pass by the small hut of a poor couple, Lokes a Mama and Lokes a Babay, who were quarreling and shouting at each other.

The quarreling couple blamed each other for their misfortune in life. Lokes a Babay blamed Lokes a Mama for being lazy and not knowing how to raise a family and to make a good living. On the other hand, Lokes a Mama put the blame on his wife who, he said, did not know how to be thrifty.

Overhearing the quarrel, the Sultan and Ba’i of Agamaniyog stepped in and admonished Lokes a Mama and Lokes a Babay. When they got home, the Sultan and Ba’i of Agamaniyog talked about the quarrel between the poor couple until they themselves began to argue. Solotan sa Agamaniyog blamed Lokes a Mama for being incapable of making life prosperous for his family. Ba’i sa Agamaniyog put the blame on Lokes a Babay. She said, “If Lokes a Mama were well managed by a good wife, he could be a good husband who could make a good living.”

The Sultan and Ba’i could not keep from arguing, each one insisting at being right, until their argument resulted in a serious quarrel. Each swore that he/she could reform the poor couple by managing one of them. In the heat of their argument, the Sultan and the Ba’i of Agamaniyog agreed to part ways.

The Sultan brought Lokes a Babay to live with him and Ba’i sa Agamaniyog in turn went to live with Lokes a Mama. Before she left the torogan (royal house), she said, “Someday Solotan sa Agamaniyog will pick up the leftovers of Lokes a Mama.” The sultan smiled and swore that, as long as he had the strength and the means, such an event would not happen.

The Sultan offered his new companion everything she wanted. Lokes a Babay demanded to have livers of a cow and carabao to eat every day at every meal, and these were given her.

One day the Sultan of Balantankairan came to visit. Solotan sa Agamaniyog was very embarrassed at the dry welcome that Lokes a Babay showed his royal visitor. She served neither his visitor nor him. It was at this time that he became convinced that Lokes a Babay was lazy and capricious. He also realized that his wealth had gradually vanished.

Meanwhile, Ba’i sa Agamaniyog could not even climb up the small hut of Lokes a Mama because it had no ladder. When she told him to make one, Lokes a Mama answered that he had no tools. She said, “You’re really silly. Why don’t you have any?” She gave him her knife and told him to use twigs if that were what it would take to make a ladder. Once inside the hut, Ba’i sa Agamaniyog told Lokes a Mama not to come near her, because in reality she was not yet divorced from her husband but had only a temporary arrangement with him. She asked him for food, but Lokes a Mama could not offer any. She told him to gather ferns from the forest for dinner.

Ba’i sa Agamaniyog would often send Lokes a Mama to the forest to gather plenty of firewood. Sitting by the window one day, she saw a huge tree that stood out from the others. She asked Lokes a Mama about it and learned that it was kaya-o sandana (sandalwood), a very useful tree. She told him to cut down the tree, chop it to pieces, separate the branches from the trunk, and store all the pieces under their hut.
The Sultan of Balantankairan was looking for sandalwood. Lokes sa Mama told him about the sandana stored in his hut. He said that in Agamaniyog no one would find such a tree except the one he had. The Sultan, very much interested, said he was willing to pay any price provided there was enough sandalwood to fill his boat. He said he was willing to leave behind all that he had in the boat, including his seven maids and seven servants. Lokes a Mama immediately led the Sultan to his stored sandalwood and the Sultan took all aboard his boat, paid Lokes a Mama generously and left.

Ba’i sa Agamaniyog and Lokes a Mama became rich. A beautiful torogan was soon erected, and Ba’i sa Agamaniyog ordered two kanter (beds). She bought a sultan’s tobao (headdress) for Lokes a Mama and changed his name to Maradiya Dinda. She was always surrounded by her seven maids, and Lokes a Mama, now Maradiya Dinda, was always escorted by his seven male servants.

One morning Solotan sa Agamaniyog found a tobao and was told that it was Maradiya Dinda’s. Taking it with him, he went up the torogan of Maradiya and saw him lying in bed like a sultan, while on the side was his former wife, whose demeanor teasingly reminded him of the good fortune they had before they were separated. Upon seeing him she said, “My dear Solotan, do you remember when I said that someday you will pick up leftovers from Lokes sa Mama?”

Blinded with tears, the Sultan hardly found his way out and went home. He then became sickly and nearly died from all his heartaches.

2.) Masaalla: Tausug Proverbs

Tausug Wisdom -
To the Tausug, a proverb is masaalla, a word of Arabic origin. Some are pittuwa, or advice about life. Proverbs are part of daman or symbolic speech, which includes riddles and courtship dialogue.
Some proverbs follow:
Tausug: In lasa iban uba di hikatapuk.
Tagalog: Ang pag-ibig at ubo ay hindi maitatago.
English: Love and a cough cannot be hidden.
Tausug: In ulang natutuy mada sin sug.
Tagalog: Ang natutulog na alimango ay matatangay ng agaos.
English: A sleeping crab will be carried by the current.
Tausug: Wayruun asu bang way kayu.
Tagalog: Kung walang usok, wala ring apoy.
English: There is no smoke where there is no fire.
Tausug: Atay nagduruwaruwa wayruun kasungan niya.
Tagalog: Kung ang isa ay hindi makapag disisyon, siya ay walang kinabukasan.
English: One who cannot decide will have no future.
Tausug: Ayaw mangaku daug salugay buhi.
Tagalog: (1) Huwag aaminin ang pagkatalo haggang ikaw ay nabubuhay. or (2) Hanggang maybuhay, may pag asa.
English: Never admit defeat as long as you live.

NORTHERN MINDANAO

1.) THE FLOOD STORY

Igorot

Once upon a time, when the world was flat and there were no mountains, there lived two brothers, sons of Lumawig, the Great Spirit. The brothers were fond of hunting, and since no mountains had formed there was no good place to catch wild pig and deer, and the older brother said:
"Let us cause water to flow over all the world and cover it, and then mountains will rise up."  97
So they caused water to flow over all the earth, and when it was covered they took the head-basket  98 of the town and set it for a trap. The brothers were very much pleased when they went to look at their trap, for they had caught not only many wild pigs and deer but also many people.
Now Lumawig looked down from his place in the sky and saw that his sons had flooded the earth and that in all the world there was just one spot which was not covered. And he saw that all the people in the world had been drowned except one brother and sister who lived in Pokis.
Then Lumawig descended, and he called to the boy and girl, saying:
"Oh, you are still alive."
"Yes," answered the boy, "we are still alive, but we are very cold."
So Lumawig commanded his dog and deer to get fire  99 for the boy and girl. The dog and the deer swam quickly away, but though Lumawig waited a long time they did not return, and all the time the boy and girl were growing colder.
Finally Lumawig himself went after the dog and the deer, and when he reached them he said:
"Why are you so long in bringing the fire to Pokis? Get ready and come quickly while I watch you, for the boy and girl are very cold."
Then the dog and the deer took the fire and started to swim through the flood, but when they had gone only a little way the fire was put out.
Lumawig commanded them to get more fire and they did so, but they swam only a little way again when that of the deer went out, and that of the dog would have been extinguished also had not Lumawig gone quickly to him and taken it.
As soon as Lumawig reached Pokis he built a big fire which warmed the brother and sister; and the water evaporated so that the world was as it was before, except that now there were mountains. The brother and sister married and had children, and thus there came to be many people on the earth.

CORDILLERA ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

1.) The Boy Who Became a Stone 

A Tinguian Folklore

One day a little boy named Elonen sat out in the yard making a bird snare, and as he worked, a little bird called to him:

“Tik-tik-lo-den” (come and catch me).

“I am making a snare for you,” said the boy; but the bird continued to call until the snare was finished.

Then Elonen ran and threw the snare over the bird and caught it, and he put it other boys to swim.
While he was away, his grandmother grew hungry, so she ate the bird, and when Elonen returned and found that his bird was gone, he was so sad that he wished he might go away and never come back.

He went out into the forest and walked a long distance, until finally he came to a big stone and said:

“Stone, open your mouth and eat me.” And the stone opened its mouth and boy.

When his grandmother missed the boy, she went out and looked everywhere, hoping to find him. Finally she passed near the stone and it cried out:

“Here he is.”

Then the old woman tried to open the stone but she could not, so she called the horses to come and help her. They came and kicked it, but it would not break.

Then she called the carabao and they hooked it, but they only broke their horns. She called the chickens, which pecked it, and the thunder, which shook it, but nothing could open it, and she had to go home without the boy.

2.) Wedding Dance

By Amador Daguio

Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the headhigh threshold.  Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.

"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."

The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.

But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.

"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and lights
upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.

"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."

"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."

He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"

She did not answer him.

"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.

"Yes, I know," she said weakly.

"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to you."

"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.

"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late for both of us."

This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.

"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."

"Yes, I know."

"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"

"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.

Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls.

Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.

"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best wives in the
whole village."

"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost seemed to smile.

He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he hold her face.  The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.

"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."

"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."

"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."

"I have no use for any field," she said.

He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.

"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."

"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."

"You know that I cannot."

"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."

"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."

She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.

She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled,
resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.

They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to the other side of the mountain.

She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of the mountains
five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she had lost him.

She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die."

"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.

"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."

"Then you'll always be fruitless."

"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."

"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."

She was silent.

"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."

"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."

"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."

The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.

"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.

"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."

"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love you and have nothing to give."

She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"

"I am not in hurry."

"The elders will scold you. You had better go."

"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."

"It is all right with me."

He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.

"I know," she said.

He went to the door.

"Awiyao!"

He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.

"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.

"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his neck.

The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.

Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.

She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her
husband a child.

"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not right," she said.

Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong as the
river?

She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.

Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.

When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.

When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.

Lumnay though of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.

The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.

A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.

Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.

3.) MEETING
by Consorcio Borje

THE little church stood in the shadow of acacia trees. A narrow gravel path lined with cucharita hedges led from the street into its cool, quiet yard with the moss on the dim boles of the trees and the dew on the grasses. The roar of the dusty, blindingly white city surged and broke like a sea along the concrete pavements that skirted the churchyard, but went no farther.

At the whitewashed wooden gate, the young man stood diffidently. Nervously fingering his battered felt hat, he pushed in the gate, stepped inside, allowed it to swing back, and then slowly walked down the path.

The chilly dampness of the place rested like a cool hand upon his fevered brow, and he expelled a breath of relief. He walked as slowly as he could, savoring through all the pores of his lean young frame the balm of this sudden reprieve from the heat and brutal impersonality of the big city.

Three concrete steps led up into the vestibule. At the top step he saw the congregation inside the heavy hardwood doors, and hesitated.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that , and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

The voice was long and sonorous, and it struck a responsive chord in the young man's heart, but he could not see the speaker. The last pew hid the altar from him. Over the pew he could see the fluted row of organ pipes, the massive rivet-studded rafters, light that streamed down at a deep angle from a tall window of colored glass.

"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."

For perhaps an hour the young man stood at the door, feeling deeply unhappy, frightened, and lost. He dared not enter. He looked down at his torn, dusty shoes, his stained clothes, felt the growth of beard on his chin, and already he could feel the cold eyes of the people in the church examining him. He retired quietly to one side of the vestibule, where he could not be seen from the inside, and leaned against the wall to rest his trembling limbs.

And then the people began streaming out, and he felt relieved that they did not even glance his way. After a while, he looked into the door. There was no one in. He crossed himself quickly and entered.

For a long time he sat there staring dully at the sounding emptiness before him, for breaking against the wall still was the reverberation of bells tolled a long time ago.

Through all this he could hear his heart beating in a weak slow measure, and again the beatific sense of completeness and of being filled his soul like mellow wine. The seat was deep and restful. The wood was firm and cool. He sank back and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he saw that his hat had fallen to the floor. The five-centavo pancit mami that he had eaten last night had already evaporated, and he felt a shot of pain in his middle as he stooped down to recover his hat. After the pain, a weakness and trembling seized his limbs, and cold sweat beaded his forehead. The church swam before his eyes.

Sunlight streamed through the west windows. From its angle he knew it must be late in the afternoon. He had been asleep in the church for the greater part of the day, and now he felt again vaguely forsaken, and the chill and the solitude were no longer very soothing but were almost terrifying.

Rocking from one foot to the other, he got up hastily and made for the door, and it was then that he saw the girl standing at his back.

"I've been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo for the sunlight crowned it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.

"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"

"Yes? But let's take a seat, please."

He licked his dry lips. "I didn't mean to sleep here. I just fell asleep, that's all."

"There's no harm in that, I'm sure," she said reassuringly taking her seat beside him and pulling him down. "You're a stranger here?"

"I came to the city about a week ago."

"Staying with relatives?" Her voice was direct and cool.

"No relatives, ma'am. I thought I could get a job here. I had heard so much about opportunities here, and I wanted to work myself through college…"

She listened quietly. The quick responsive look in her eyes brought his confidence back and made him give details about his life and his recent misadventures he would not have revealed otherwise.

"We are from the same province as you," she said. "My father works in the city hall. He got transferred here because my mother wants to see us through school. Come home with me, ha? We want you to tell us about the province. It was five years ago when we were there last. Yes, they will like to see you. Don't be ashamed. You can't blame people for not knowing any one in the city."

She was only sixteen, or thereabouts, he could see in the calesa which they took; she was dressed in white, simply and cleanly, almost to the point of the anaesthetic severity of the nurse, but there was a subtle perfume about her like that of rosal and then again like that of sampaguita, and the lines of her face were clean and young and sweet.

"Why, I'd be ashamed--" he began again, looking at himself with horror.

"No more of that, ha?" She flashed a smile at him, her lips a light rose like her cheeks, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

The horses' hoofs beat a tattoo on the street cobbles, round this corner, round that corner, ancient Spanish houses under acacia trees, rows of tenements, sounding walls of old Intramuros, a tangle of horse-drawn and motor traffic.

Everything went suddenly white at once.

The first thing that he knew was the mildly pungent smell of rubbing alcohol and liniment. The place he was in was dark, except for a street light that came in through the billowing curtain in the window. He was in a bed, a deep wide bed, with mattress and cool covers fragrant with soap and starch and ironing. From beyond the darkness to one side came to him the faint sound of voices and the tinkle of a piano.

He jerked up with a great consciousness of guilt, but he sank back again, dizziness swamping him back and overpowering him. Lying back there, accusing himself of imposing on a stranger's hospitality, he began to cry, but he wiped away his tears quickly when he saw the door slowly open and a head showed in the opening.

"Oh, you're awake now."

It was the girl, and she ran softly in. He felt greatly disturbed within. She was looking down now and her hand was upon his brow and he could feel the warmth of her and get the smell of her.

"Good!" she exclaimed and ran lightly out, closing the door behind her. In a minute, she was back with two other persons. A switch clicked and the room sprang into light, and he could see there was an elderly woman whom she resembled closely, and an elderly man in pajamas.

"Well!" said the man heartily. He had a pipe gripped by the bowl in one of his hands. "So this is the cababayan. Well!"

The woman came over and laid her hand on his forehead. A wedding ring shone on one finger. He looked up into her eyes, and all at once he knew he need not be afraid…

The girl's parents, it later developed, were among the more influential of the parishioners, and he was able to get a job through them as church janitor, with bed and board provided free in the servants' quarters of the rectory. Besides sprucing up the church, he had charge of the lawn which he mowed and the hedges which he trimmed. Out of his pay of twenty pesos a month he managed to send home ten pesos to his mother in the month's-end mail.

"Good morning," he would say humbly to the girl, Lita, when Sundays came and she was in the church. Then he would hurry before her to dust the pew she always took with her parents.

"How do you do?" Lita would ask, and sometimes she would say, "Pedro, you must come and get your Sunday dinner with us. You don't do it so regularly, now."

From the back of the congregation, dressed in his best white-cotton suit, his eighty-centavo necktie, his tan-and-white Gandara shoes, he would listen raptly to her sing in the choir. He could always tell her voice, and he could always see her lovely radiant face magnified among the rows of others.

Three afternoons a week, a calesa would halt at the church gate, and Lita would alight in her plain white dress. She would come down the cucharita-lined path, and she would enter the church where for an hour she would sit or kneel, just looking at the altar, and her lips would move silently. Then would Pedro hush his steps, and he would put aside his lawnmower and his shears and look at Lita longingly through the window, at her profile outlined against the lighted side of the church.

On her seventeenth birthday, Lita gave Pedro a picture. It showed her with eyelashes swept up and lips half-parted in a smile. A stray lock fell against one cheek. One dainty end of a lace bow curled against the straight line of her throat, while the other reclined against the swell of her bosom.

"I can keep this?" asked Pedro wonderingly, and Lita said with a thrill of laughter. "Why yes, it's yours. Why do you have to ask?"

He had enrolled in a night collegiate course prepared especially for working students, but out of the money for school fees and books he managed to save as much as fifty centavos at a time. He spent his savings for a neat little picture frame, painted black and silver, and put Lita's picture before him as he pored over his textbooks at home.

"How are you getting along in school?" said Lita one afternoon, after she came out of the church.

"At least I passed in all my subjects last semester."

"That's fine. I'm sure you'll make an engineer yet." She hesitated at the gate, and turned back to him slowly. "Don't let anything distract you from your work," she said. "put your mind on it and keep it there."

He thought, she looks very young, but too deadly serious. That frown on her face. That mature cast of her mouth. But he only said, "Thank you, Miss Miel."

"Miss, still?" She laughed again, and the world was shining once more, no longer full of problems and dark and weighty hues, but full of the silvery ringing of bells and the light patter of dancing feet.

"I think I can help you," she went on. "About trigonometry now. It's my favorite subject."

"I cannot understand the cosine of--"

"You mean Thomas' theory? It's easy. Like this." And thereupon she knelt on the path and with a twig traced figures in the light fluff.

"You should make a good engineer, there are such things as women engineers, you know," he ventured.

"My father said I should," Lita confided. "But my greatest interest does not lie in that way, Pedro. It lies somewhere else. Should I tell you?" She crinkled her nose at him, but again she was suddenly grave. After a pause: "I've never wanted to grow up," she suddenly shot at him and hurriedly picked herself up, ran out of the gate, hailed a calesa and drove away.

Pedro's perplexity was solved the following afternoon when Lita came again to the church to pray. It was Saturday afternoon and Pedro was dusting. This time she had on a black veil that fell to the tip of her nose. She was a tiny figure kneeling at the far end of the church. Her head was bowed low, but he thought he could see her lips moving. He moved about on tiptoe, used his mop gently.

He was on the floor reaching under a remote corner when he heard her light "H'lo" behind him. He rose up hastily and nodded his greeting, "Good afternoon, Miss Miel."

"Good afternoon, Mister Deño."

"Er, Lita"

"That's better. Did I startle you yesterday afternoon?"

"You did."

Then Lita was telling him she was going to be a nun.

"But why?" asked Pedro incredulously.

"Does it sound foolish to you?" Her lashes swept down on her cheek, and for the first time he noticed that she had the pallid look as of one in cloistered, moss-grown nunneries.

"I don't know," he said, "I don't know." And then he went on, feeling foolish, "But you can't want to give up all this for life imprisonment."

"It is not life imprisonment," she said gravely, "but the essence of what I've always wanted. All my life I've wanted complete communion with God."

He shook his head to clear it of the cobweb of pain and dizziness, and her hand crept to his. The touch of it sent an electric shock through his whole frame.

"Even as a child," she went on, "I had always wanted to have a room that looked much like a church, with a hard, bare floor, and hard, bare seats, and an altar, and an image of Mother and Child."

She was looking down kindly at him, red spots in her white cheeks. "Now, as I live from day to day, it seems as if I'm being swept farther and farther away from that childhood dream. I want my childhood back. I hunger for its simplicity and its faith. It seems as if deep inside me I'm parched and thirsty, and I need the coolness and dampness of seclusion. You understand, don't you?"

Again it seemed as if the church rustled with the prayer and devoutness of a congregation, and there was again, that sonorous voice saying, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God."

"Good-bye," said Lita, her long, white, shapely fingers tightening on his rough, dark ones.

"I'll not see you again?"

She shook her head slowly. Suddenly she bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and as suddenly she ran down the aisle and out of the door.

As he sat in a pew, the bells were silent, but still they seemed to be tolling from far away, the air vibrating with their ringing. He sat in the pew and stared dully in front of him. Light streamed in from an eastern window. The ghostly congregation still rustled with its faith and sacrifice. On his cheek her lips were still warm.

But suppose, he thought, it had been some other way. Suppose:

"I'VE been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo with the sunlight crowning it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.

"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"

And then they were walking down to the whitewashed gate, and he was vaguely surprised that there was no calesa waiting there. But he went on to cross the street nevertheless, keeping in his eyes the slim, white figure, with the clean, young lines of face.

Outside the churchyard, the traffic was heavy as usual, and the lorry drivers swore mightily at the broken-down old man, with that vague half-smile on his face, who was crossing the street and breaking all rules of pedestrian traffic and all the laws of self-preservation.

"That engineer, Pedro Deño, you know," said one of a couple driving a car near the scene. "Dirty rich, but damned absent-minded, too."

"That's the matter with these successful people," said the other. "They put their mind on a thing and keep it there, to the exclusion of all others, even motor traffic."

"Yeh, Deño, for instance. Must be thinking of house plans and bridges."

                                       4.) Quietness

                                     by Amador T. Daguio

I am lovers of all quietness

unechoed songs within a silent heart,

a silver pond, a statued loveness

where words can take no part.

i love the quiet ways of memory

the quiet looks to give you loving praise,

the quite secrets of my misery

through quiet nights and days.

The quiet mountains of the earth i love,

the moving clouds the sun, the dewy leaf

my quiet questioning of god above,

my quite, tearless grief. 

 

 

                   5.)The Creation

                                                          Igorot

In the beginning there were no people on the earth. Lumawig, the Great Spirit, came down from the sky and cut many reeds. He divided these into pairs which he placed in different parts of the world, and then he said to them, “You must speak.”

Immediately the reeds became people, and in each place was a man and a woman who could talk, but the language of each couple differed from that of the others.

Then Lumawig commanded each man and woman to marry, which they did. By and by there were many children, all speaking the same language as their parents. These, in turn, married and had many children. In this way there came to be many people on the earth.

Now Lumawig saw that there were several things which the people on the earth needed to use, so he set to work to supply them. He created salt, and told the inhabitants of one place to boil it down and sell it to their neighbors. But these people could not understand the directions of the Great Spirit, and the next time he visited them, they had not touched the salt.

Then he took it away from them and gave it to the people of a place called Mayinit. These did as he directed, and because of this he told them that they should always be owners of the salt, and that the other peoples must buy of them.

Then Lumawig went to the people of Bontoc and told them to get clay and make pots. They got the clay, but they did not understand the moulding, and the jars were not well shaped. Because of their failure, Lumawig told them that they would always have to buy their jars, and he removed the to Samoki.

When he told the people there what to do, they did just as he said, and their jars were well shaped and beautiful. Then the Great Spirit saw that they were fit owners of the pottery, and he told them that they should always make many jars to sell.

In this way Lumawig taught the people and brought to them all the things which they now have.

NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION (NCR)

                                                                 1.)  Manggagawa

ni Corazon de Jesus

Bawat palo ng martilyo sa bakal mong pinapanday
Alipatong nagtilamsik, alitaptap sa karimlan
Mga apoy ng pawis mong sa balak ay kumikinang,
Tandang ikaw ang may gawa nitong buong Santinakpan.

Nang tipakin mo ang bato ay natayo ang katedral
nang pukpukin mo ang tanso ay umugong ang batingaw,
Nang lutuin mo ang pilak, ang salapi a lumitaw,
Si puhunan ay gawa mo, kaya ngayon’y nagyayabang.

Kung may ilaw na kumisap ay ilaw ng iyong tadyang,
Kung may gusaling naangat, tandang ikaw ang pumasan;
Mula sa duyan ng bata ay kamau mo ang gumalaw,
Hanggang hukay ay gawa mo ang krus na nakalagay.

Kaya ikaw ay marapat kailain at itanghal,
Pagkat ikaw ang yumari nitong buong kabihasnan…..
Bawat patak ng pawis mo’y yumayari ka ng dangal,
dinadala mo ang lahi sa luklukan ng tagumpay.

Mabuhay ka nang buhay ng walang wakas,
walang hanggan;
At hihinto ang pag-ikot nitong mundo
pag namatay.

CAGAYAN VALLEY

1.) People of Consequence 

by Ines Taccad Cammayo

Camus and his wife secretly prided themselves in being, of all the residents in their barrio, the only ones who had really known and lived with people of consequence.

When he was a young man, Camus had been the houseboy of a German haciendero. The German who was a bachelor had often told Camus that his punishments were for his own good because he must learn to shed his indolent and clumsy ways if he ever hoped to amount to anything. Unfortunately, before he could learn more from his stern master, his father wrote to say that he must come home right away because his bethrothed was waiting. The German had mouthed unintelligible, guttural curses which Camus listened to with mixed feelings of shame and pleasure because it meant that he was wanted after all, but in the end, the German sent him off with a de hilo cerrada suit, a heavy pair of boots capacious enough to let him wiggle his gnarled toes in, and two months extra pay which came handy fox the wedding celebrations. That was twenty years ago, shortly before the war, and although Camus had all the intentions to see the German off when he left for his country, the expense and the effort turned out to him, at the last minute, discouraging. In the meantime, Camus and his wife were themselves becoming people of consequence.

They now owned the best house in the barrio which, with other lakeside villages, lay at the base of a high chit which the people called Munting Azul because a perpetual haze clung to its summit. To reach the summit, one must climb the step and circuitous steps that many years ago, time men, Camus among them, had hacked out of the thick underbrush that covered the entire face of the cliff, and then cemented in places where the down-rushing water in rainy seasons was wont to wash away.

One could also leave the village by crossing the lake westward. The upward climb was the quicker route but was difficult for the old and the weak. Once the embankment was reached, Munting Azul leveled off into fields, and three kilometers away was the town of Cuenco.

The town was bypass by the National highway but jeepney and a couple of minibuses shuttled to and from the larger towns, including Capitolyo, on the descent. Cuenco was the only large town which Camus really knew although he had been to the Capitolyo occasionally. When he lived with the German, they resided in what was called the White House in the middle of the vast, treeless hacienda rimmed by forests across the lake.

Meding, his wife, had, in her own adolescence, lived in the Capitolyo for almost four years as servant of the Mayor’s family. It was there that she learned the hard-driving manners of townsfolk. It constantly amazed him how she could make idle time yield profit, and even more astonishing, how, having made profit, she held on to it. Camus, a hard worker, was at his fishing long before the dawn, and later in the day, mending his nets on the pier he had built from his hut. It was his father’s life he had learned, and after he came from the German’s household he saw no cause and no way to change.

The first thing that Meding did was to barter over his vehement objections the one male carabao he owned for a puny female. When it began to yield milk, she gathered it to make into a white curd which she molded into banana leaf containers or boiled into sweet candy. Not one frasco found its way to their table. Every Sunday she would climb the steep ascent to sell her white cheese and milk sticks in Cuenco.

She gathered the occasional coconuts and mangoes from the trees behind their house and sold them, together with the harvest of fish Camus hauled in every day. She was so undemanding, she never had to sell at a loss or to mortgage his catch, and the hard – dealing middleman who came with his tempting offers bypassed their house with great aloofness.

Meding even opened a postal saving account and once in a while she showed him figures. As the sum increased he felt he knew her less and less. Long before she began the feverish phase of acquiring possessions, when they sat down to their frugal meal he felt that, perhaps they could afford something more appetizing. A look of Meding’s face bent over her plate, contented in determined self-denial would silence him.

She astounded him most by buying crochet thread and needles. In the mornings, keeping by herself from the village women, she sat at the window of the little hut, thrusting away at her hook and thread, making beautiful patterns of lace that he believed, his heart bursting with pride, no other wife in all the lakeside barrios could make, let alone possess her infinite patience. To his unbelieving ears, she whispered that he wavy laces were so prized that housewives in the town willingly pail for them with sacks of rice.

In time their neighbors ran to them for loans, and although she never charged usurious rate, Meding was as hard as stone when it came to collecting. If the borrower failed to pay or on time she demanded goods in payment. Her laconic and unsmiling manner defeated any jocose attempt at gaining time and even whining plea bought only the unfeeling retort that life was just as hard for her, and that always shamed them into passing for one better than their neighbors knew how Spartan was their life.

The first change in the quiet girl he married came one night: lying, facing each other on the slatted floor of their bedroom in the hut which was now their kitchen, she spoke of her plans, spelled each dream so grimly as to leave no doubt in Camus’ mind that these were already real. Talk of a child had long since been avoided. Now she spoke of bringing in kiln-dried posts from Cuenco, a proposal wildly ostentious and impossible, considering the steep descent from town. She spoke of galvanized roofing, capiz windows and all the accoutrements of town houses, hardware, varnished walls, two big bedrooms, a sala so spacious it could accommodate their old hut, and carved narra furniture. When the house was finally finished – a reality of shining walls and costly gleaming windows – Camus went about apologizing for its size. “We really planned to have it much bigger, but my wife with her usual good sense wanted something more modest.”

The house never wore a coat of paint, growing darker and rain-stained with every passing season. The bedroom was never occupied except when out-of-town officials came. It contained a monstrous, carved and highly varnished bed. Its snaky posts bore aloft a wooden balance that gave it unusual elegance. A three-panel mirrored aparador in the room was used by no one except guests; so, too, a washbowl inlaid with mother-of-pearl which gleamed against the mahogany shadows of the room.

One day, Meding said, “The young men are going up to the Capitolyo next week. It would be a good time for you to go with them.” After a long pause, she added, “they invite you every year but you have gone only once. You could visit with the Superintendent this time.” At an earlier fiesta, when Camus at the inspector’s house, the official was already taken up with his other visitors. The señora did not know him. She must have also been distracted at the never-ending stream of visitors. With an absent-minded wave hand and murmured acknowledgement, she ordered someone to unburden him of his coop of chicken and made him feel at home. “Well, don’t just stand there!” an old crone had cackled at him. “Dress the chickens!” With that she thrust a halo into his hands. Camus was dismayed, but only for a few seconds. He spent the rest of the day cheerfully helping out in the backyard, very much needed and feeling useful as he stirred a huge carajay. He had caught a glimpse of the Inspector but the man was deep in conversation with some important-looking men. In a way, he was glad. He had stripped down to his shorts to save his Americana from stain.

His only regret about that visit, however, was his not having been able to join in talk with the townsmen, When they came to his house, he never felt shy telling his favorite recollections of Señor Lehniann, the German master whom many of them had heard of but never seen, “lie was a man of few words and a great reader. There was this thick book which he always read but would never let me touch. Otherwise he was extremely generous with other things. Advice. His old clothes. Sometimes money.”

As the years passed, his stories of intimacy with the German master grew, and there were times when he ventured saying that he was such the confidant of the aleman that they used to hold long conversations. The aleman had often said that he should aspire to go to Manila to study, and that, he would make good because he would then cultivate further the inclination and the attitude, that he acquired through exposure to better things. Time had a way of making resolutions fade, but the inclination remained, Camus would say, with a complacent shrug.

A few years back, a frequent visitor, the Councilor for their area, offered him a caminero’s job on a section of the municipal road to Cuenco. Camus still remembered the four short weeks of that only employment with an emotion akin to righteousness. He received thirty pesos scrupulously kept their dirt hidden in their backyards. It was the grass and the weeds that continually threatened to overrun the road. Then someone told him that the same Councilor had placed someone else as a checker who had nothing to do but check on the camineros. With polite apologies to Meding and the baffled councilor, he left the job.

In the yard of their neighbors house a group of young men began to gather. Laughter broke out often and once in a while, someone slapped a neighbor on the back. Camus could make out nothing; the whirr of the crickets seemed to drown out all their talk. He sat at the window picking with his nails, a veined and hairy leg drawn up on the bench to support his chin. In the dusk, the group looked conspiratorial.

He looked long at Meding clearing the table. “You are right, I think,” he said half-asking.

Meding shrugged her frail shoulders. She crossed the wobbly bamboo bridge that connected their house to the old hut. Camu followed her without a word, wondering what she would do.

She led the way to the smaller of two rooms. “I have prepared your white suit,” she said.

She knelt before the wooden trunk, took a black key from the ring which always hung at her waist and twisted it into the keyhole. The suit lay on top of all the old clothes, like a silent shock that it had been years since he wore it. The fragrance of its being kept in the trunk was wafted to him, redolent of an opulence he had never really enjoyed again after that morning of his wedding. Camus received it with some shyness. It was almost like a ritual and Camus was glad that the soft light hid his emotions.

All their life, sentiment had had very little meaning perhaps because love had never figured in the courtship. Camus married Meding because his father and her father had agreed on the union. She had submitted impassively, although he had heard she was spirited girl. The vaunted spirit was to be known by him only through the regimen with which he had imposed on their lives.

Sometimes when the barrenness of living engulfed him with a misery he could not understand, he felt that this was as it should be, life is hard, why should he complain, she was an ardent example of what hard work and frugality could bring. In this reveries, he began to believe in the gladsome fullness of his life as the German had said it could be. Camus held the coat before him. “It may no longer fit me,” he said.

He felt that he had grown bigger, taller, more expansive in girth, so that when the coat slid easily over his shoulders and the pants hung loosely around his waist, consternation filled him. He realized that he had really, looked at himself for sometime. He turned and lifted the lantern from the hook and walked slowly into the bigger bedroom where the three-paneled aparador stood.

The man in the mirror was someone he scarcely knew. He was stooped-shouldered, his chest caved in, and his silvery hair that stood erect in a close-cropped aguinaldo cut was sparse and revealed his shiny brown scalp.

The face- taut and mask-like – shook him. He began to think that he would never be able to greet his hosts in the capitol like with that boisterous warmth they themselves greeted him when they mounted his stairs. Even if he had never intended to do so, he had long since he learned that humility pleased his visitors.

So the suit did not really matter. All these years he thought he had really grown stout, lie was still strong at the nets. He could lift sacks of rice with ease. Heavy loads never shortened his breath. When his wife’s face appeared from the shadows in the mirror, he felt even more saddened. He wondered did she ever feel the need to look and live well, to experience heady well-being. Her lips drew back unsmiling, and as an answer to his thought, she spoke, her eyes betraying nothing: “You have not changed much. The years do riot tell on you.”

Camus stared at his image like it were stricken adversary. He slowly unbuttoned the coat dropped the pants and handed them back to Meding.

“Perhaps you had better put this back in the trunk.” He looked at his wife in the mirror and in a voice not his, he told her that he could not go.

She listened to him indifferently; already in her mind, she was counting the chickens which she must catch, tie up and cage in stripped baskets. She knew how in the town every leaf of vegetables had its price and these would be her husband’s levy. She had watched him welcome those people with touching sincerity that somehow made the patronizing tones of his guests sound boorish. And she, too, had a acquiesced, having learned from dealing with merchants that sometimes yielding was only way of getting your due.

The young men are starting early in the morning. We must be up before the first cock crows,” she said flatly, refusing to yield to the pleading in his eyes.

The crowd of women converged on Camus the moment he alighted from the bus, screaming and tugging at his two chicken coops. Then as suddenly as a swarm of flies that have found another victim, they dispersed, he wing him with the empty containers and several smelly bills in his hands.

Camus stared at the money, then quickly pocketed it. He walked towards the church, not minding the crowd, the hawking vendors who thrust bundles of cake at his face. Camus rubbed the back of his hand against his temples. Every step was taking him nearer to the Superintendent’s house and how could he go to him without the chicken’s of his throat was parched, the vendors thrust their wares at him again. Pinipig! Balut! Kropeck! Mais laga! Above the voices, in a tinkling bell now attracted him. He turned around, an ice cream vendor smiled at him: Ice cream, sir! Ice cream! They exchanged a look of understanding.

He watched the vendor pat layers of multi-colored ice cream into the cone, yellow, violet, white. A final, careful pat of chocolate. He waved away the insistent hands and wares of the other peddlers. Slow he drew the money from his pocket, picked the bill most frayed and gave it to the vendor. As he licked the ice cream, savoring the taste, he stretched out his hand for the change. All was quiet in the plaza now, and suddenly he realized that he had almost twenty pesos to spend as he pleased. He squinted craftily about him, seeing for the first time the enticements of the shops, hearing for the first time the loud speakers talking to him alone. Yes, he must tell his wife how pleased the good lady had been, how truly line gentlemen and friend the Superintendent was.

2.)The Rural Maid
By Fernando M. Maramag

1.
Thy glance, sweet maid, when first we met,
Had left a heart that aches for thee,
I feel the pain of fond regret—
Thy heart, perchance, is not for me.

2.
We parted: though we met no more,
My dreams are dreams of thee, fair maid;
I think of thee, my thoughts implore
The hours my lips on thine are laid.

3.
Forgive these words that love impart,
And pleading, bare the poet’s breast;
And if a rose with thorns thou art,
Yet on my breast that rose may rest.

4.
I know not what to name thy charms,
Thou art half human, half divine;
And if I could hold thee in my arms,
I know both heaven and earth were mine.

3.) ANG PAGPAPAALAM

ni Leona Florentino

 

 

O Mutya ng pag-ibig, ako’y dinggin
Nasadlak sa hirap at dumaraing;
O Puso, maanong amutan ng tingin,
Ang kaawa-awa’y iyong pansinin.  

Tunay ngang kaawa-awa
Itong inulila ng yumao
Nguni gumagaang ang pakiramdam
Pagkat alaala mo’y laging kaakbay.

At bilang pamamaalam
Sa iyong piling ako’y lilisan
Pagkat nalasap ko ang tuwa at ligaya
Na hindi mawawala sa aking alaala.  

Malungkot akong magpapaalam--
Adyos, Liyag, mabangong asucena;
Sa aking masamyong dibdib itatago kita,
Nang ang bango mo’y di na maglaho pa.

Ngayo’y lagi nang kalong ng katahimikan
At kasa-kasama ng mapait na lumbay
Pagkat sa diwa ko’y umiibis ang kalungkutan
Nagbibigay-wari ng kahabagan.  

Samahan ka ng Diyos, O punong-puno ng sigla
Gayundin yaong sa pag-ibig nagnanasa,
Samahan ka ng Diyos, ikaw na nagtatago ng pag-irog
Ang puri mo’t dangal kailanma’y di madudurog.

4.) Frustrated wish

Translated by pfof. Carolina Arceo

So happy and trusted

These people in love

For their sorrow they have

Somebody to share.

My destiny that’s so lonely

Am I alone with this?

For I said I won’t think twice

Because suffering I am now.

If ever I fall in love to a lady

There’s nothing I could see

That I have my counterpart.

Time I shall forget when I was born

Better is a thousand years

If at birth I was gone.

I should have tried to explain

But tounge-tide I was

For I could clearly see

That I won’t be lucky.

And it really pleases me much

That my love for you know

So I swear and promise you

That my life is just for you.

5.) PANAGPAKADA  

by Leona Florentino

Timudem man! O Imnas ni ayat,
ti un-unnoy toy seknan ni rigat;
imatangam, O puso ket imutektekannak
anusem a paliiwen toy daksanggasat.
Daksanggasat konak a ta maipusay
toy naldaang unay a bangkay;
ngem ni lagip dinto met bumalakday,
agnanayonto laeng a sitatarabay.
Kas panagpakada dagitoy nga innak baliksen,
ta toy bagik maipanaw kadagita taeng;
taeng ni ragsak, liwliwa nga innak lak-amen,
dinto met mapunas nga innak pampanunoten.
Silaladingit toy puso nga agpakada,
Adios laing, napusaksak nga asusena;
Iti sayamusom ti barukongko ipenpennaka,
tapno dinto maumag ti agdaplay a banglona.
Siaaddaakto laeng, ti taeng ni alinaay,
ta ditoy panunot salemseman ni tarumpingay;
tarabayennakto ni napait a liday,
ket isunto kaniak ti mangay-ay-ay.
Dios ti kumuyog, O napnuan sayaksak,
nga esmanto dagiti agay-ayat;
Dios ti kumuyog, salimetmetmo mangalasag,
ta tapno dayta sudim, taknengmo ti di marakrak.