Today, in my country of birth, the current president appears before the lawmakers of the land, and before the entire nation. This is the same president who vowed to defend and protect the citizens of the country and adhere to the constitution. This is the same president who, soon as he took to power, violated the most basic rights of the poor and defenseless.
Today he speaks as if he were the hero of the land. Each of us, in our own minds, try to be the hero we dream of. Duterte’s greatest hero, as he has declared and proven by his actions many times over, is the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos who silenced critics by sending them to prison, if not to the grave.
Duterte’s so-called war on drugs, in a mere three years, has gone way beyond what Marcos himself managed to do.
I wrote the following poem last year as a first draft. The second draft did away with all that is so blatant in the piece and, in a way, turned out to be a better poem. But it didn’t retain the anger and condemnation I wanted to convey. That poem is due to appear in a South African journal, the New Coin.
Today, as I cannot join any of the protest rallies in my country of birth, I decided to share this poem here, and perhaps on my Facebook author account.
We Cannot Allow the Dead to be Silenced
The man who curses shall be cursed
to live forever in the stories we shall tell
our children. They will not fear him
or his twisted reincarnations.
Our children shall not be shaken
by his threats. His attack dogs
with teeth of bullets cannot make us
turn away and flee.
Though the dead may be left
unclaimed in morgues
or dumped on the side of the road,
their faces bound with packaging tape,
they will never be silenced.
The veins on their exposed necks
and stiffened arms will turn to roots.
And we who fight to remember
the cruelty inflicted upon those
we can no longer hold shall bear
bitter fruit to be shoved
down the tyrant’s throat.
-o-
The title of this post may look odd to those who are not familiar with the play on words Filipinos like to employ by borrowing from another language. A rough translation would be – aside from SONA (State of the Nation Address) – “Done in by Duterte.”
https://www.rappler.com/nation/updates-duterte-state-of-the-nation-address-july-2019
https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/235870-groups-hit-duterte-admin-performance-ahead-sona-2019
