To My Muse

No more is the muse invoked;

the lyre is out of fashion;

no poet cares to use it;

by other things are the dreamy

young inspired to passion.

Now if imagination

demands some poesies,

no Helicon is invoked;

one simply asks the garçon

for a cup of coffee please.

Instead of tender stanzas

that move the heart’s sympathy,

one now writes a poem

with a pen of steel,

a joke and an irony.

Muse that in the past

inspired me to sing of the throes

of love: go and repose.

What I need is a sword,

rivers of gold, and acrid prose.

I have a need to reason,

to meditate, to offer

combat, sometimes to weep;

for he who would love much

has also much to suffer.

Gone are the days of peace,

the days of love’s gay chorus,

when the flowers were enough

to alleviate the soul

of its sufferings and sorrows.

One by one from my side

go those I loved so much:

this one dead, that one married;

for fate seals with disaster

everything that I touch.

Flee also, muse! Go forth

and seek a region more fine,

for my country vows to give you

fetters for your laurels,

a dark jail for your shrine.

If to suppress the truth

be a shame, an impiety,

would it not then be madness

to keep you by my side

deprived of liberty?

Why sing when destiny calls

to serious meditation,

when a hurricane is roaring,

when to her sons complains

the Filipino nation?

And why sing if my song

will merely resound with a moaning

that will arouse no one,

the world being sick and tired

of someone else’s groaning?

For what, when among the people

who criticize and maltreat me,

arid the soul, the lips frigid,

there’s not a heart that beats

with mine, no heart to meet me?

Let sleep in the depths of oblivion

all that I feel, for there

it well should be, where the breath

cannot mix it with a rhyme

that evaporates in the air.

As sleep in the deep abyss

the monsters of the sea,

so let my tribulations,

my fancies and my lyrics

slumber, buried in me.

I know well that your favors

you lavish without measure

only during that time

of flowers and first loves

unclouded by displeasure.

Many years have passed

since with the ardent heat

of a kiss you burned my brow …

That kiss has now turned cold,

I have even forgotten it!

But, before departing, say

that to your sublime address

ever responded in me

a song for those who grieve

and a challenge for those who oppress.

But, sacred imagination, once again

to warm my fantasy you will come nigh

when, faith being faded, broken the sword,

I cannot for my country die.

You’ll give me the mourning zither whose

chords vibrate with elegiac strains

to sweeten the sorrows of my nation

and muffle the clanking of her chains.

But if with laurel triumph crowns

our efforts, and my country, united,

like a queen of the East arises,

a white pearl rescued from the sty:

return then and intone with vigor

the sacred hymn of a new existence,

and we shall sing that strain in chorus

though in the sepulcher we lie.