Domingo Goan Landicho PhD

Domingo D. Landicho
After EDSA

You are the poetry pure
A maple flame of autumn
An elm reaching for the sky
As a lark sings a lullaby
Heralding a dawn at twilight.

Walk ahead, friend of the world,
Our poetry will sustaik your life,
For endless years immortal
Inscribed in the veins of lines
A metaphor of strength.

You are the poetry pure ,
A flowing river with no end,
A natal blood of maple in spring
A palm of an elm reaching for the sky
As a lark sings a hymn of birth.

Iowa City
12 October 1987

Domingo D. Landicho
After EDSA

When I went to the Hemmingway Farm that sunlit day,
Amidst an ocean of brownish stalks of corn,
I remembered the plight of peasants in my native land.

One day, they came to the city of power
Where the mighty are sheltered in splendor;
Throngs of humanity in the sun,
Chanting the voices of the soil to the palace,
Singing the song of hope so long unheard.

Give us a piece of land to till,
Give us a piece of land to plant:
A grain of corn and a grain of rice
That we may harvest a grain of dreams.

But lo! A valley of shots thundered
Orchestrated symphony of the elite's gun,
Angered by the voices of the earth
Singing a song of hope long dead
Disturbing a tranquil slumber.

Before the day was over, the street was littered
With body of the dead whose only crime
Is to dream for a little share of God's wealth,
Possessed by the wanton avarice of few.

When I left the Hemming way Farm as sunset loomed,
I saw the fleeting shadows of peasants in my native land.
Singing a song of hope for grain and dreams
Amidst the brownish stalks of the unharvest corn
In my native land.

Iowa City
15 September 1987