Reading for the Day: Excerpts from Rafael Zulueta y da Costa’s “Like the Molave”

Note: This is only a series of excerpts. Self inserted asterisks to indicate a jump.

VI.

My American friend says:

show me one great Filipino speech to make your

people listen through the centuries;

 show me one great Filipino song rich with the

soul of your seven thousand isles;

 show me one great Filipino dream, forever

 sword and shield —

Friend, our silences are long but we also have our
speeches.

Father, with my whole heart I forgive all.

 Believe me, your reverence.

Speeches short before the firing squad, and yet

of love.

VII.

My American friend continues:

you are a nation being played for a sucker;

poor fish swallowing hook, line, and sinker.

And I answer with parable of analogy:

brown brother and packed for home,
one adventured into port and called us brothers;
we fed him the milk and honey of the land;
he filled his pockets by the sweat of the little
taking with him but one song for souvenir:
O the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga.

The little brown brother opens his eyes to the

magnitude;

created equal;

sea where dwell his strong brothers.

glorious
sound of the Star-Spangled;
dreams to the grand tune of the American dream;
is proud to be part of the sweeping American

*     *     *
sings the American epic of souls conceived in liberty;
quivers with longing for the brotherhood of men
envisions great visions of the land across the
And then the fact. The crushing fact of a world no

longer

deed.

shining through the exalted word;
the world where the deed is, the intolerable

*     *     *

The expatriate returns sullen and broken . . . We know

placards

Filipinos

Filipino Pickpockets; the loneliness, the

woman denied.

the story, the black looks, the scowls, the

in the restaurants saying: Neither Dogs nor

Allowed; the warning at the fair: Beware of

Yet what say you, repatriate? America is a great

land.

— Written 1940 by Rafael Zulueta y da Costa (1915- 1990)