Six PM by Nick Joaquin

think the title of his poem was a very significant number for him because it was the
time that he was born. This moment while I'm reading his three poems actually i
dont really understand what his message all about was. I find it hard to explain and
interpret his poem. Why? Because first, he used some words that cannot be found in
the dictionary and then his words and images were also very difficult to understand.
But then I want to give my insight about his poem based only to what I think the
poem is all about.

This poem probably was talking about the journey goingto home takes a long time
and the speaker shifted to symbolic and recollection of experience about a
particular places (But IWhere am I bound?/ Atlantis, the Caribbeans, or Cathay?)
(parang ang layo-layo ng mga naiisip niyang mga lugar, like he was having an
expedition) They not only bring up the legendary and the distant but also the
unfamiliar, the undiscovered territories that needed conquering( like what the
spanish did to our country. In the latter part of the second stanza, the images cease
being domestic: strange shores, Apocalypse, conquistador connotes energy,
activity, desire. He entertains the thought being in these active, historical, even
Biblical places, even addressing a you, maybe an oapparent lover, serving as the
image of an intense, if unfulfilled because unfamiliar, desire:

Apocalypse awaits me: urgent my sorrow

towards the undiscovered world that I

roam warm responding flesh for a while shall borrow:

But the dream vanishes as soon as the bus makes its stop: quite unwillingly he lifts
himself up, and abandoning the dream, must begin again. In the morning, he must
rise, trudge back to the office, and punch the clock, announcing his arrival. In the
last line, by restoring the ridiculous tandem of conquistador/clock-puncher (which
might be extended to real vs unreal, realized vs unrealized binaries) the
speaker/poet is forever yoked to the irreconcilability of these two terms, unknown
and unfulfilled desire for warm responding flesh forgotten.