SUMMER’S DAY

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Warm is the day of summer.

The city’s drenched with sweat

Much more for humans

Sweats abound as unwanted flies

On the surface of sticky skin

Sticky is the summer’s day.

 

Warm yet blessed is the summer’s day.

The hot sun indeed bakes the skin a-gruel

Yet so does it burn all malignant germs

They quiver like it were their last

Winter, on a summer’s day

The signs of sickness shy away.

 

The body is a sturdy rock

Unreached by echoes of ailments

Only echoes of joy a-fleeting on a summer’s day.

 

[Writ. 15 May 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

FAREWELL GRANDFATHER

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

 

Farewell, beloved Grandfather!

 

I should have seen you

Yet but fate has not

Spared me the permission

To be delivered to you airlifted

Fate’s the traffic lights of for flights

T’wards your citadel on Terra

 

I will still dialogue with you

In my dreams, in dreams

You are a living memory

Of my youth and your wisdom charmed

And mixed like fused ions

 

Here I am, your founded vision

I am, I swear.

 

 

[Writ. 14 May ’91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila] 

COME BACK O! LOST CRAFT

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

 

You will come back, o! lost craft!

You were drowned in the great deluge

Where faith in self lost its scepter

To turbulent waves of underesteem

Faith has lost faith!

 

You are not lost!

Nothing is

Lost, not a craft that burns

The nights that owls had no monopoly

Over, beat your own despair!

Rise and ride astride the new tidal waves!

 

Find the whirlpool from the deep recesses!

Twill pull you up

To where bubbles are on sea surfs’ tops

Afloat you shall be

You are your own life saver

 

You

Are.

 

 

[Writ. 14 May ‘99, Cubao, Quezon City, MManila] 

WHY DO I LOVE YOU SO DEARLY

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

Why do I love you so dearly?

As if love were an omnipresent elixir

          From the teapots of Eros

Its fading is now next to impossible?

Certainly and o! so certainly because

You’ve been a person unto me who

          Never ran out of kindness

          Never ran out of reasonableness

          Never ran out of sweetness

And so you deserve my love and tenderness.

 

O! Sweet daughter of the race of Zarathustra!

Behold! I’ve come for you! I am a gift

A present by my forebears Apollo and Dionysos.

I’ve come armed with the edict of my Will—

          Evoked is my will to Love!

I am a harbinger of the Shadow—

          The benign shadow of Love

          That ceaselessly follows you:

          It has been anchored in your bosom.

 

The forces of the Past can’t seem to leave you

Even as the Future now knocks upon your present

But the Past will be incinerated by its own twilight

And the Future gleefully glides before your countenance.

Shudder not with the sight of the Future

You shall find the door to its halls

And I’m the guardian who’d patiently waited for you

I’d lead you to Future’s spaces where we

Shall celebrate our affinity with dances

And fancies.

The Future will be delighted as we’ll dance

          Together on its sacred floor

And Love’s the tune that we as ordained

Lovers never can ignore.

 

 

[Writ. 20 Jan.’89, U.P. Village, Quezon City, M.Manila]

COME TEMPEST!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

Welcome, most devastating Tempest!

I’ve been expecting your arrival. Do again

Try to smash my Will and sap my strength with your

Diabolic winds, undersea currents and tsunamis.

Let us, while the universe watches, dance together

With no choreography: you are destroyer of all laws.

Crash me, crash me till the hardest of my bones

And inner strength will erode and fade away

To become lore that will no longer fit to be narrated…

That is, if fortune is on your side.

But Tempest, I am the architect of situations,

The productive zenith of sorceries of a million magi,

The master slayer of demons and dragons

That attempted to waylay me on my journeys.

Tempest, never have I lost to you, never have I

Pleaded that you depart from me when you’re around

As when you were present a hundred times before.

I have become cast as the hardest steel

Each time that you’ve made your visit.

Come, Tempest! Make your call once, twice and

A thousand more times: witness me as I again transform

Your powerful forces into ones that will steer me ahead—

Five steps backward and ten steps forward, I’m never

Off-balanced at all by your potent tormenting winds.

Feel me,Tempest, I’m overly cast

I’ve become a super-Tempest whose everyday dream is

To ensnare you as a slave and outcaste.

 

[Writ. 08 Jan.89, U.P. Village, Quezon City, M.Manila]

SLEEP NOT O! POETIC INSTINCT!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

 

No, lost shan’t you be.

Not when the voltages of inspiration’s currents

Flow like undiminished floods of recurrent

Seawaves upon imagination’s canvasses.

 

Let me find and catch you

In your deep slumber: ‘tis not your sad departure.

You’ve bid me no goodbye, not that I remember.

 

O! Poetic instinct of my inner chambers!

Come out of your doors when I have

Need of your benevolent company.

 

 

[Writ. 08 Jan.’88, U.P. Village, Quezon City, M.Manila] 

DON’T OFFER ME DIRGES (I’m But A Slum Habitue)

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

 

Don’t offer me dirges or marches for graveyards

I am no more a rat eater whose niche

Is this make-shift tenement, no longer

Human by the yardsticks of Grecian perfection

And Roman artistry, a fragment too unfit

For the wholeness of Renaissance’s imageries.

 

May I invite to dinner my neighborhood’s constant visitors

From state halls and army barracks

Who on not too few occasions offered me

And my neighbors their version of a gift:

Bulldozed tenements and shanties leveled off

Spiced with gunfire that severed resistance.

 

Felled boys and dead bodies of urban poor

Anyway deserve not the hymns of public praises,

Praises long reserved for princes and taipans.

History’s everyday indeed can’t seem to be

An asset shared by all men alike.

 

 

[Writ. 06 Dec. 1988, Proj. 8 Quezon City, M.Manila]

PROMETHEUS IN ACADEMIA

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

Welcome, Prometheus!

Descend upon the pillars and corridors of Academia!

Have your merriment and feasts among

The expectant adherents of your holy fire.

Illuminate the residents of Academia with your

Undying light: mana of reason and knowledge.

Awaken us to the flowering consciousness of the knower

As your light fires up the longing lamps of us all.

Remain! Linger on! Let your sacred essence be

Of the inherited Elixir of our triumphant march

          Along Life’s trek!

Happy at last will be Zeus over our sublime fraternity.

 

 

[Writ. 11 November 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]

SPEAK O! FELICITOUS LADY!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

 

Speak to me, dear Friend!

Are you a ghost—a ghost of Light—

That smashes the granite rocks of masks

I’ve upon myself built with esteem’s cement?

Speak! Lady chronicler of the inner theatres!

Behold! We need no longer pass along

This world’s tortuous roads as our monads fuse—

Yours and mine, mine and yours.

Regain shall I my own pure unbesmirched

Halo of intelligence and will and aspiration:

You are the sacred moment that fertilizes

Again like unto growing buds of verdant lores

This sanctified shadow of my inner theatre.

Speak! Lady of the free spirits!

Quench my thirst for tales of delight!

You are the tale, the bringer of delight,

The ultimate acting being in the Thespian stage.

Receive my swearword: I offer

To you the wakened ghost of mine, once more

To amplify your limitless experiencing of the magic

In the world of humans; my words, planted and grown

 

 

[Writ. 19 November 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]

THY WILL BE DONE

Erle Frayne Argonza

 

 

Whenever the day starts I knock

Upon the doors of Life to request extensions

Of my lease to exist. Not that I

Will be merry forever notwithstanding fears

Tensions and anxieties that arise

In my here-and-now; I’m simply unsure

Of what may be up for me. Well, Life

Responded as always—cheerful, lighthearted,

Contagiously optimistic. I’d catch its air

Of glittering hope, daunting spirit,

Its elan of all elan. The I’d say too,

“Life, please do share unto others what you’re

Offered to me.” “Thy will be done” said Life.

Thy will be done. Done will be

Hope’s cremation of every unwanted carcass

Of Obscurity: faith in self regained.

 

 

[Writ. 21 October 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]