SONGS OF THE EARTH

"Sing in me, Muses, and through me tell the story."

So goes the first line of the epic poem The Odyssey by Homer, in Robert Fitzgerald's translation, delivered in strict confidentiality, beyond the dictates of chronology. Here in The Telemachy the hero Odysseus was already free from an adventure with Calypso, but we did not know yet - probably we did not understand yet - that beyond the scheme of that poetic first line was the greatest adventure in literary history. We were simply caught by the lyrical spirit of this great first line and from then on we were enticed to follow the route of the next thousand lines.

What are there in words, what are there in phrases, that beyond our understanding of their meanings command our respect to the resonance of theirs sounds? We may tell somebody, "Stop!", and even if he did not know it from "Go!" he will freeze, even for a second, because the quality of our expression more than the etymology of the term did the work for us. I may call it the art of the sound, as time and again I myself stopped and listened, or stopped and read, when I heard or saw lines or sentences that swept me off my feet due to the sing-song quality of their sound. And in literature, nowhere is this more true than in poetry.

In The Vintage Book Of Contemporary World Poetry, editor J.D. McClatchy mentioned about the NASA project in 1977 where, inside the Voyager that was launched into outer space, there was a recording of different earthly sounds which in a way may enable to explain our civilization and showcase our thoughts and our feelings to an extraterrestrial civilization that may encounter it. Included in that recording were spoken greetings in 60 languages plus other random sounds that express the diversity of our life: rain, whales, heartbeats, train whistles, fire, laughter, music by Bach and Stravinsky, a Javanese gamelan, an Indian raga and a Japanese skakuhachi.

NASA could very well have enveloped all these sounds with the words of Homer, through Fitzgerald, "Sing in me, Muses, and through me tell a story", as all those sounds in collectivity tell of an earthly story, Hey Mr. E.T. there is an earth out there, there is another form of life out there, come, listen to this recording and discover our difference...

In all its plenary intent, the book's inclusion of the NASA story was simply to parallelize it with a collection of poems from different parts of the world - our world - and echo it to the people - our people - that there are different and diverse sounds from out of every corner of this planet that tells us, through their sing-song quality, to stop! and take a moment to listen to "the guardians of memory...of whispered, perplexing, gorgeous, keening, bemused, thoughtful, angry, soaring voices...the songs of the earth."

And on this transcendent score may it be my pleasure, dear friends, to introduce to you in the same serene pattern I was interposed to it, a flokloric song/poetry from a relatively unknown culture in A Country Of A Thousand Cultures known as The Philippines, this culture being lived and loved in the hinterlands, in a province so tightly-knit its people could have been all relatives by blood...strongly impressing that the song is sung by any one native to another, brother to sister to brother, of which I took the liberty to translate to my native Tagalog, as well as in English, for whatever purpose they may serve.

Wherefore, from that beautiful part of the world come these venerable lines that bear confirmation, in all its humility, as a legitimate song of the earth:

Ope mangke wayik
yo idduk nuera siin sikuak
pinurayan nak lamang
natayak si raddam...

Nasaan na, kapatid ko
ang pagmamahal mo noon sa akin,
At pinabayaan mo na lang akong
pumanaw sa dagit nitong kalungkutan...

Where was the love, my sibling
which you had once reserved for me,
now that you left me to perish
in the midst of this melancholy...