February 24, 2011

          THE SWINGLES CAME TO TOWN

The guard caught us,
   huddled behind the wings
and kindly enough led us out.
We therefore
huddled against the doors
ears pressed
to the polished wood.  Kindly
enough it let the music
     Out.
  And the music
reached us,
straight to our bitterness
and mute helpless anger,
         despite
the callous stare of the seller of souvenirs.
    Throughout a fugue
      she complained
of a backache which had been bothering her.
Her husband got the worst of it, poor soul;
she didn’t know why he put up with her, ho-
nestly.  It was really marvelous.
         Marvelous,
       the beautiful people exclaimed
As their eyes sought evidence
      that
  they were
        being seen
    in the gleaming lobby.
(You people are dead...)
        Marvelous, they said,
                    and mentioned this or that piece
while their eyes carefully avoided
     carefully avoided
            the quiet corner
where we sat.
  But the floor was clean enough.
After the intermission the doors shut in
  the cool expensive air
       again.
What a pity, the souvenirs seller’s eyes
Communicated disgustedly, that the music
               wouldn’t
        stay in as well.

                                          
                                                                   -  Ma. Lorena Barros
                                                                      undated

















February 20, 2011

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