COME HOME, HEROES

Bienvenido N. Santos

Come home now, heroes, the roofs are patched,

The shaky bamboo stairs are firm again;

Yellow bells now cling to the barbed wire fence

And the choir sings at high mass in the church

On the blasted hill. Father Belarmino lost

His eyeglasses and recites the epistles from memory,

A pale boy reads to him at night, but his mind

Wanders where death lay beneath the altar, prayers

Never quite reaching the end when the end came.

Come home, heroes, and walk our streets erect,

Put the ribbons and the guns away. For a while

We may not recall that my brother’s grave

Was an open sea and that mother died as you

Slunk away to join your comrades in the wilderness;

That a groom stood naked in the valley of stones

Crying for his lost bride; and your laughter

Trembled among the trees. Once, among the trees

Hermogenes lay dying, pointing to the trail

Where your footsteps ended and the sea began.

It is time to be home, heroes, for the hands

That buried him are working hands now,

Rugged and strong and firm upon the plow;

When they turn the soil, there are no bones

Among the muddy roots and memories are faint;

The citrus are yellow in October, of evenings

The hills are ripe for another deflowering

Like the bride in the valley of stones

And my brother’s youth in a nameless sea.