-I-
All things dark and booty-full
All rackets great and small
All things rank and plunder-full
This "New Republic" has them all!
Decreed a day of "thanksgiving"
Is September Twenty-One
The advent of martial power
The power of the gun!
A formal Constitution
Approved by show of hands;
By voters and non-voters
In parks and grandstands!
With a Sixth Amendment
The loyalists' excuse
There can't be legislation
Against the Monarch's views.
And now, the Agrava Commission
The only ones who still don't know
Ninoy was slain for but one reason
He was Marcos' foremost foe.
The feats of engineering
The pyramids of steel
With billions disappearing
In many a "Dewey" deal.
Patented privateering
From light to logs and stones
And rampant profiteering
In KKK "kurakot" loans.
Marcos' solemn promise
Was "to reform society"
Behold the New Corruption
To rank satiety!
Transnationals and cronies
Plundering hand in hand
While disease and destitution
And death stalk the land.
Our freedom of peaceful assembly
To air our grievance and seek redress
Repressed by gas grenades and truncheons
Of legal goons in combat dress.
-II-
Woe unto us, the people
Our leaders and our priests
Who confine our witnessing
To alms and religious feasts;
And asking "who's my neighbor?"
To imprisoned and persecuted
By love of self and comfort,
Blinded, deafened, muted;
To dehumanizing tortures
For "state security"
And rampant "salvagings"
Committed with impunity!
Insensible to injustice
Mouthing the "Marcos line"
We spurn God-given birthrights
As pearls upon the swine!
Our present and our future
Willed only by one man
Like Jews of old, the subjects
Of Pharaoh at Malacañan!
Who says "he has a covenant
So he won't die, he won't resign
He's indispensable
He's there by divine design!"
Still it is, that God's
Continuing creation
Must be man's handiwork
'Tis we, must build our nation!
Shall we be slaves forever?
Bereft of heart and will
To make oppression bitter
Our deliverance, fulfill?
KAILAN PA? O BAYANG MAGITING
ANG MANG-AAPI'Y, ITATAKWIL?
KAILAN PA, NA SA MANLULUPIG
'DI NA PASISIIL?
29 September 1984
License: (license)
Comments