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THE MALADY OF THE BEWILDERED WORDS

by: JOHN CARLO U. MEJICO

· Volume V Issue I

The world has changed, the people turned astray

never know the culture, never know their way;

they wore a cloth of the unknown foreign lands

they spoke of tongues never lift them from the ground.

 

Words that brought us peace and sovereignty,

an air castle we let to gradually fade and flee;

morrows assure nothing but a mere oblivion

fragments of language no grasps of this nation.

 

T’is place of solitary trembles one’s identity,

dialect has done none to ear the country’s plea;

natives of archipelago unaccustomed to its sounds,

more so of its culture, our past could not be found.

 

Time was persecuted for this country’s languor,

this dark enchantment seized everyone’s valor;

those glitches on the tapestry unweave the history,

the voice of this nation has been pleading us in wee.

 

Oceans of blood that stained our forefathers,

little did it reach our country’s fate further;

if only the scribbles not carry us the boulders,

we’d never ever talk of our mighty gallant victors.

 

In this time, they long hailed ‘future’ of motherland,

lit the fire within and spit out the words -- no blonde;

West would ne’er be the East nor speak of ancestor,

beseech more our inner selves to seek our sheer core.

 

Not the glitters, the sparks, the shimmers of the clothes,

nor eloquence in words of foreign tongue, we be told;

forgotten islet once called “the Pearl of the Orient Seas”,

beloved by us in words, yet left worse struggled in abyss.

 

Could this be the end of this long and tiring battle,

that the victors of yesterday paid their lives in sickle?

never we’ve learned the doom unless we allow it to settle,

look inside, speak the identity, resound words o’er thy bell.