Requiem for the Dead at the Battle of Agdangan

In memory I was a fool deceived by
flighty passions and arrogant dreams.
Running with charlatans in uniforms
reveling in brave talk of revolution.
So marched I to the clangor of battle
death calls dressed in bold adventure

The sun must rise in the east, they say,
bring a fiery sunrise to this doomed land
where flowers never bloom and flourish
on infertile fields undisturbed by graves,
mourned and unlamented by our tears.
Water and till it with blood to let it live?

Content then I was already of my rest,
glad of my lot and place seeking only
that the land enfold me with abundance
as I pay it my love and constant labor
following the ways of my ancestors
in this land of kindness and beauty.

Fate inevitably revealed trumpet calls
from ominous clouds from the west
threatening to lay waste my fields
where my hand had lovingly borne
seeds from my table and flowers bloom
on land once laid bare and unsown.

Banners bloodied beneath Simurai
at the stairway to clouds we battened
against the intruder overwhelming
with pen, paper, bullets and Krags.
I stood with teeth and fist and fought,
‘until shot and blades our belly opened

Is there not valor in simply to love?
To clasp and embrace what is dear.
Isn’t courage a fight for lost causes?
for treasured but long lost freedoms,
for struggles to grow strong and better
for that end-greatness was our quest.

To see in my land, my children beloved
warmed soft by gold, glowing sunbeams,
running free in the fields of the fallen
over grass blown by unfettered wind,
on earth held not by might and power,
but by those who loved and tilled her.

Memory die away lost to the grave,
words, deeds finally pass and fade
So, stranger by the road, recall then
that day that I lost all, but saw at last
my sunrise, my grass green and warm
as I fell at the Battle of Agdangan.


P.B. Robosa