Ricaredo Demetillo – a poet-critic, educated and trained in writers’ workshop in the United States/England.
In the late 1960’s, he pioneered ( using English and English metrics ) a linkage with the oral tradition. The result was the award-winning Barter in Panay, an epic based on the Ilonggo epic Maragtas. Inspired by example, other younger poets wrote epics or long poems, and they were acclaimed by the major award-giving bodies. However, except for Demetillo’s modern epic, these attempts fall short of establishing a linkage with the basic folk tradition. Most are like long meditative poems, like Eliot’s or Neruda’s long pieces. Interest in the epic waned as the 1980's approached.
The Three Kings ( R. Demetillo )
I.) We had to start from darkness, Darkness around and in us: In us, the will’s decay, Leaves shaken by the wind; About us hooves, the frightful shrieks of horses, Stampede to farther darkness.
II.) Even in darkness we had sensed the light: First as an inkling in the blood As spring is rumored by the winds of March, Why did we mope that darkness would not lift?
III.) Camels gave out; And since we could not hire an equipage We walked. The pebbles hurt our feet, But we traversed the grey penumbras. The fogs had lifted The winds no longer spouted sleet.
IV.) How celebrate the miracle of light? By day, the bonfire of the sun; By night, the lustrous drowsiness of stars, And in our thoughts, light merging into light, Word cradled by the word.
V.) Light dazzled us at first, We who were used to grope, We squinted at the sun and made a face, But our bodies tanned, got used to light, Deserts made way before our staves.
VI.) Rulers were sly. They bent, politic, to our words, But all the time we sensed the fox-tongue shape their words. One saw they had such vested interests That they would rather slaughter innocents Than yield what they had got Along the roads, the mobs sold and were sold.
VII.) We could have stayed to watch the sights And even glean a joke or two from each, For we are used to shades of dark, We feared to grow more callouses.
VIII.) What did we hope to find? A kingdom’s heir perhaps deep-canopied Pillowed by proud love on downy coverlets?
IX.) We must admit we had such things in mind For we rehearse bright fairytales To cheer us in the cold, indifferent nights.
X.) Still we must strip the lie’s integument, No special star shone on our path. We heard no visitation in the hovering dusk Only the rustle of a leaf. That was enough.
XI.) So, at the journey’s end, We learn humility anew. We kneel before truth cradled in the homely fact.
XII.) Now we depart another way. No doubt we’ll glimpse long avenues of trees, White columned porticoes draped with clematis, And lovers lolling in the shade of trees, Perhaps a romping child.
XIII.) But also rubbish heaps: Flies blackening the crusts. Within our ears the moaning of the sea, Sand in our shoes.
XIV.) But we have seen and understood.
Report – Phil Lit.
Poem is divided into 14 stanzas / parts.
Vocabulary:
clematis – a genus of mostly climbing plants.
Interpretation:
The kings being pertained to: – stanzas 1, 4 / stanza 6 / stanza 9
stanzas 1, 4 – Maybe God The Father? ( not sure )
stanza 6 - rulers
stanza 9 - ourselves ( not sure )