LITERATURE DURING THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION AND THE POST-WAR

Philippine literature in English came to a halt during the Japanese period. It

experienced a dark period, because almost all English newspapers, except the
Tribune and the Philippine Review were abolished. These English publications
were under strict surveillance, together with Filipino magazine
"Liwayway"which was later managed by the Japanese.
The most common theme of poems during the period was nationalism, love of
country, faith, religion, arts and life in the barrio.
Short stories were limited because of the strict prohibitions imposed by the
Japanese government in publishing works in English.

THE MARH OF DEATH

Bienvenido M. Santos
Were you of them, my brother,
Whom they marched under the April sun
And flogged to bleeding along the roads we knew and loved?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear and beyond the road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We were young togrther,
So very young and unafraid;
Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun,
Brown pools and mud inthe December rains;
Ran barefoot along the beaten tracks in the canefields,
Planted corn after the harvest moths.

Here, too, we fought and loved

Shared our dreams of a better place
Beyond those windingtrails.

Mary, my brother, march!

The spring are clear beyond the road
At the foot of the hill is rest.
We knew those roads by heart
Told places in the dark
By the fragrance of garden hedge
In front of the uncle's house;
The clatter of wooden shoes on the bamboo bridge;
The peculiar rustling of the groves
Beside the house where Celia lived.

Did you through the blood in your eyes

For Celia sitting at the window
 As the thousand upon thousand of you
Walked and died on the burning road? If you died among
The hundreds by the roadside
It should have been by to bamboo groves
With the peculiar rustling in the midnight.

No, you have not died; you cannot die!

I have felt your prayer touch my heart
As I walked alone the crowded streets of America!

And we would have walked thise roads again one April morn,
Listen to the sound of working men
Dragging tree trunksfrom the forests,
rebuilding homes--laughing again
Sowing the fieldswith grain, fearless
From the cloudest skies.
You would be silent, remembering
The many young bodies that lie mangled by the roadside;
The blood-soaked dust over the bloody rage of men;
The agony and the morning and the silent tears;
The grin of yellow men, their blood-stained blades opaque in the sun;
The many months of hunger and torture, and waiting.

I would be silent, too, having nothing to say.

What matters if the winters were bitter cold
And loneliness stalked my footstep on the snow?

March, my brother, march!

The springs are clear beyond the road
Rest, at the foot of the hill.

And we would walk thise roads again on April morn

Hand in hand like pilgrims marching
Towards the church on the hillside,
But there would be no hillside;
Only a little nipa house beside the bamboo gorves
With the peculiar rustling in the midnight.

Or maybe I would walk them yet,

Remembering.........Remembering.............