Emmanuel Torres won the Outstanding Young Men award for literature in 1961, started the Ateneo Arts Club in the same year, and was curator of the Art Gallery from 1960-2001.
This poem talks about a time during the Marcos regime when the pope came for a visit. Squatters areas were whitewalled, possibly in order to "make an impression" on the Pope. He saw right through it, however, and insisted on meeting a family from the area. The poem reflects the more realistic angle of the story, a mockery of the Church, in some ways, by alluding to doctrines.
This poem talks about a time during the Marcos regime when the pope came for a visit. Squatters areas were whitewalled, possibly in order to "make an impression" on the Pope. He saw right through it, however, and insisted on meeting a family from the area. The poem reflects the more realistic angle of the story, a mockery of the Church, in some ways, by alluding to doctrines.
Ma. Therese Boniface Roxas
~ANOTHER INVITATION TO THE POPE TO VISIT TONDO~
Emmanuel Torres
Next time your Holiness slums through our lives,
we will try to make our poverty exemplary.
The best is a typhoon month. It never fails
To find us, like charity, knocking on
all sides of the rough arrangements we thrive in.
Mud shall be plenty for the feet of the pious.
We will show uoi how we pull things together
from nowhere, life after life,
prosper with children, whom you love. To be sure,
we shall have more for you to love.
We will show you where the sun leaks on
our sleep,
on the dailiness of piece meals and wages
with their habit of slipping away
from fists that have holes for pockets.
We will show you our latest child with a sore
that never sleeps. When he cries,
the dogs of the afternoon bark without stopping,
and evening darkens early on the mats.
Stay for supper of turnips on our table
since 1946 swollen with the same hard tears.
The buntings over our one and only window
shall welcome a short breeze.
And lead prayers for the family that starves
and stays together. If we wear roasries round
our nexks
it is not because they never bruise our fingers,
(Pardon if we doze on a dream of Amen.)
But remember to remember to reward us
with something . . . more lush, greener than all
the lawns of memorial parks singing together.
Our eyes shall belss the liveliness of dollars.
Shed no tears, please, for the brown multitudes
who thicken on chance and feast on leftovers
as the burning garbage smuts the sky of Manila
pile after pile after pile.
Fear not. Now there are only surreal assassins
about who dream of your death in the shape
of a flowering kris.
My analogy:
ReplyDeleteIt just shows here that the government during that time wanted to put a show by not letting the pope see the real situation of the squatter people.
My analogy:
ReplyDeleteI'm proud of Mr. Emmanuel Torres for being so brave to invite the Pope to visit the Tondo.
My analogy:
ReplyDeleteMr. Torres wanted to show the Pope the real situation of the squatters people.And telling him how they survived their lives for the sake of their children whom the pope will surely love.
My analogy:
ReplyDeleteThe letter shows the real situation of those people living in the Tondo. How they live there with hardships.
My analogy:
ReplyDeleteThe government of Marcos that time is making an impression to the pope that there is no poverty in the Philippines.