PANAWAGAN: In Its Lyric Sounds

More and more sectors, groups and individuals—and oh, a considerable number of the lawmakers in Congress!—have expressed their calls to President Duterte to resume the scuttled Peace Talks. They lament the squandered chance of this nation’s lifetime!

In just a matter of six months, the talks, everyone recalls, have made much headway and is in fact on its way towards tackling the substantive agenda of the entire peace negotiations — the CASER (Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms). Most every mindful Filipino has pinned his/her high hopes that sooner than anyone can ever dream of a just and lasting peace will have reigned in the Islands after a long long era of unpeace.

The high hopes have been overshadowed by recent events that prompted President Duterte to stop the peace negotiations. Most especially that the chief executive’s proclamation was quickly—oh so very quickly indeed!— followed by DND Chief DelfinLorenzana’s own declaration of “All Out War”.

It seems as though the dreaded three-worded ‘bomb’ of the Defense Chief was long balled in his cheeks and was just waiting for the most opportuned moment to be spat out his lips.

But the embers of hope are still very much alive in the hearts of all peace-and-freedom-loving peoples in the Islands. And these embers are fast turning into flaming tongues all sounding calls for the resumption of the peace talks.

Artists have lyricized these calls in poetry and songs and in every other creative forms and accents or wherever they find their artistic outbursts objectified to be part of the over-all “panawagan”.

And so, the following lyrical verbalizations join in the resounding call for the Peace negotiations to be resumed and pursued to their complete and final design – a “just and lasting peace”-

Fly High, Bird of Peace!

Fly high, Bird of Peace and Justice!
Beat your splendid wings with gladsome vigor!
Swim deep into the dense clumps of clouds!
Trace all the pathways in wind and sky!
Proclaim to all the spaces and nooks of the islands
The happy tidings lyricised by the balyans
Of this new sprouting history!

Fly high, Bird of Peace and Freedom!
Flap your wings to extra swiftness!
Soar to heights on the infinite space!
Picturize the broad expanse of lands and seas!
Aim your beak on every mound on every isle
And sing your shrill cry—balyan’stestament
In this new herald glow of dawn!

Fly, Bird of a Dream long fought and died for
By countless warriors across the centuries—trill
In shrill pitch the struggle of the great masses,
Hymn of swift swishing arrows and spears,
Swinging tones of kampilans and gonging agongs!
Unison cry of the baganis of the brown race
To drive away the white-skinned invaders!

Fly high, Bird of Patriotic Love and Ideals!
Birthed in the birdling season of Lapulapu!
Your plumage soon glistened to lush whiteness,
Fondled fervently by the mighty Dagohoy!
Caressed by many a valiant baganiwarrior,
Your shining whiteness, theme of the epic chants
Of Sultan Kudarat and Andres Bonifacio!

Fly high, Bird of Resistance Ideology!
Wave your tail unfurled as banner of struggle!
Disperse the gloaming clouds by your shrill trills!
Banish them from the spaces of the high realms
That they shall not turn into rainfalls of utterance
Bearing virulent poison of treachery and deceit
In this dawning of a long-dreamt morning!

Aim high! Bird of Lofty Honorable Principle!
Raise liberation consciousness to new heights!
Make manifest to the widest realm your form
Gliding gracefully above mountain pathways,
To touch down gently on the liberated zones—
Soon to alight on the shoulder of KaParago—
Adored icon of Protracted People’s War!

Sing on! Bird of Peace and Transformation!
Broadcast your sweet melody of broad broad unity!
Twined from twelve strands of social development—
Twelve golden rays of the National Democratic Front!
Hatch the dream nestled in the heart of Inangbayan
Across countless generations of the grassroots masses—

The dream of peace, social justice and liberty.

_____

And in the language of Dagohoy, a song version of the poem above –