ORATORICAL PIECES We Have Become Untrue to Ourselves! By Felix B.

Bautista With all the force and vigor at my command, I contend that we have relaxed our vigilance, that we have allowed ourselves to deteriorate. I contend that we have lost our pride in the Philippines, that we no longer consider it a privilege and an honor to be born a Filipino. To the Filipino youth, nothing Filipino is good enough any more. Even their Filipino names no longer suit them. A boy named Juan does not care to be called Juanito anymore. No, he must be Johnny. A girl named Virginia would get sore if she was nicknamed Viring or Biang. No, she must be Virgie or Ginny. Roberto has become Bobbie; Maria, Mary or Marie. And because they have become so Americanized, because they look down on everything Filipino, they now regard with contempt all the things that our fathers and our fathers fathers held dear. They frown on kissing the hands of their elders, saying that it is unsanitary. They dont care for the Angelus, saying that it is old-fashioned. They belittle the kundiman, because it is so drippingly sentinmental. They are what they are today because their elders their parents and their teachers have allowed them to be such. They are incongruities because they cannot be anything else! And they cannot be anything else because their elders did not know enough, or did not care enough to fashion them and to mold them into the Filipino pattern. This easing of the barriers that would have protected our Filipinism, this has resulted in something more serious, I refer to the de-Filipinization of our economic life. Let us face it. Economically speaking, we Filipinos have become strangers in our own country. And so, today, we are witnesses to the spectacle of a Philippines inhabited by Filipinos who do not act and talk like Filipinos. We are witnesses to the pathetic sight of a Philippines controlled and dominated and run by non-Filipinos. We have become untrue to ourselves, we have become traitors to the brave Filipinos who fought and died so that liberty might live in the Philippines. We have betrayed the trust that Rizal reposed on us, we are not true to the faith that energized Bonifacio, the faith that made Gregorio del Pilar cheerfully lay down his life at Tirad Pass. Jewels of the Pauper by Horacio de la Costa, S.J. There is a thought that comes to me sometimes as I sit by my window in the evening, listening to the young mens guitars, and watching the shadows deepen on the longs hills, the hills of my native land. You know, we are a remarkably poor people; poor not only in material goods, but even in the riches of the spirit. I doubt we can claim to possess a truly national literature. No Shakespeare, no Cervantes has yet been born among us to touch with immortality that which is in our landscape, in our customs, in our story, that which is most original, most ourselves. If we must give currency to our thoughts, we are focused to mint them in the coinage of a foreign tongue; for we do not even have a common language. But poor as we are, we yet have something. This pauper among the nations of the earth hides two jewels in her rages. One of them is our music. We are sundered one from another by eighty-seven dialects; we are one people when we sing. The kundimans of Bulacan awaken an answering chord of lutes of Leyte. Somewhere in the rugged north, a peasant woman croons her child to sleep; and the Visayan listening remembers the crane fields of his childhood, and his mother singing the self-made song. We are again one people when we pray. This is our other treasure; our Faith. It gives somehow, to our little uneventful days, a kind of splendor; as though they had been touched by a king. And did you ever notice how they

are always mingling, our religion and our music? All the basic rite of human life the harvest and the seedtime, the wedding, birth and death are among us drenched with the fragrance and the coolness of music. These are the bonds that bind us together; these are the souls that make us one. And as long as there remains in these islands one mother to sing Nenas lullaby, one boat to put out to sea with the immemorial rowing song, one priest to stand at the altar and offer God to God, the nation may be conquered, trampled upon, enslaved, but it cannot perish. Like the sun that dies every evening it will rise again from the dead. DECLAMATION PIECES AM I TO BE BLAMED? Theyre chasing me, theyre chasing, no they must not catch me, I have enough money now, yes enough for my starving mother and brothers. Please let me go, let me go home before you imprisoned me. Very well, officers? take me to your headquarters. Good morning captain! no captain, you are mistaken, I was once a good girl, just like the rest of you here. Just like any of your daughters. But time was, when I was reared in slums. But we lived honestly, we lived honestly in life. My, father, mother, brothers, sisters and I. But then, poverty enters the portals of our home. My father became jobless, my mother got ill. The small savings that my mother had kept for our expenses were spent. All for our daily needs and her needed medicine. One night, my father went out, telling us that he would come back in a few minutes with plenty of foods and money, but that was the last time I saw him. He went with another woman. If only I could lay my hands on his neck I would wring it without pain until he breaths no more. If you were in my place, youll do it, wont you Captain? What? you wont still believe in me?. Come and Ill show you a dilapidated shanty by a railroad. Mother, mother Im home, mother? mother?!. There Captain, see my dead mother. Captain? there are tears in your eyes? now pack this stolen money and return it to the owner. What good would this do to my mother now? shes already gone! Do you hear me? shes already gone. Am I to be blamed for the things I have done? MAN UPON THE CROSS Upon the cross against the hills of the night They nailed the man, and while they speared his breast they made him drink the bile. He bore the pains alone, alone But in the hallowed darkness saw Sweet Marys face upturned in grief below. Tears filmed her eyes, but love chastened the tragic beauty of her face which neither death nor sorrow could erase. He saw and feebly in the silence strove to speak a few remembered words: but now the whispers left his lips like tender birds. His arms were cold and death was in his eyes; the streams of blood were dry upon the whiteness of his limbs. His breath was like a wounded bird wanting to stay, to stay, bereft now Mary rose and treasuring his sorrow, left.