STRIKE

Seventy-seven demands

some trifling, some

deep and huge. 

But all inarticulate

the glottals of the dumb

Somewhere back

We had forgotten speech

the correspondence of

sense of utterance. Now

wordless

sightless

numb

We march back and forth

mouths working

We know that the evil is great

but cannot begin to speak it.

“Two picketers climbed up the

monument of the Tao and veiled

it with black cloth to symbolize

the death of academic freedom

in the campus.”

Our still born gods

We bury with dumb gestures.

Oh we are unable to speak it!

We cannot begin to speak it.

Smashed glass

grief

a drop of blood on the asphalt

two drops

ten

the red seeps through our blindness

We have cast,

 the first rock.

-  Ma. Lorena Barros

   Phil. Collegian, July 31, l969