PILIPINAS

His Mother is crying,

Watching the sunrise, hoping

It’d stay until she falls asleep,

And light the beauty of her dark streets.

Inside his Mother’s womb,

Live the bourgeois and the proletariat.

The Mother’s blood is fused with her children’s blood;

The Mother’s flesh is adhered to her children’s flesh.

But in time, like most of Her offspring,

They’ll set off under the sun, singing:

“I’ve found a job, but nowhere to sleep.

My Mother worries. My Mother weeps.”

A son has flown to the other side of the world,

At the realm of the setting sun:

He milks not his Mother's breast;

He sleeps not on his Mother's chest;

He feeds not at his Mother's nest.

Has he grown to be an orphan of the West?

As he ploughs the land (not of his ancestors),

He looks at the sky and remembers what he’s once been told:

"Where your heart is, there will be your treasure, also."

Even if the mud that he works with shines like gold—

He puts down his spade, his rake, his pitchfork—

It is not his own, not his to hold.

"Mother, please take me back in your arms," the lost son pleads.

"Let me see the sun through your eyes,

In your land let me scatter and grow my seeds.”

Upon setting his feet on Her soil,

He promises not to leave without Her lore.

It is She who cultivated who he is today.

Without Her he’s a man of nowhere,

A man without a name.

For he who values not his Motherland,

Wouldn't reach his destination as if on a trackless train.

As he tears away the gold on his skin,

The Brown Man in him redeems his dreams