ENG106 LANGUAGE OF LITERARY TEXT

POETRY

1. Poem by Taufik Rafat, 1927-1998 (Pakistani)

(Written in English)

The new road to the satellite town

Bisects the graveyard. A short-cut
Which saves the commuters half a mile.

The breakfast traffic at 7 a.m.

Takes the dead with it to offices
They vacated long ago, and the midnight
Stragglers whistle them home again.

I am being sentimental I know;

But there are certain things I would rather
Be sentimental about, than not,
And a graveyard is one of them.

Source: Tomeldan, Y.V., Arambulo, T.E., et al. PRISM: An Introduction to

Literature. (1986). Manila: National Bookstore, p. 452.

“Poetry emanates from the very land from which it is written”

2. SONNET 14: FEBRUARY by Joel Vega

is blind to the noise of the fools, is blind to the glint of silver offered
by marauding gangs of thieves, for if this month is indeed the month
of endearment, why pay heed to bottomless greed and ruinous folly?
But burn we must with the fire that makes our hearts alight with hope.
With our bare hands we turn the barren fields into a golden harvest
of heavy grain, till the land to feed the hungry and the dispossessed,
turn the once gray skies to the pink of promise. At night, as we look up
to the evening skies, let the moon dotting the universe be beacons
of wish and warm memories, and like the fabled prince that looked up
to find the comfort of a rose, we plant the seeds in each moon and wait
for that night when the sky will open to a shower of many-petalled blooms.
We will look up, open our palms, our tongues tasting the minerals of distant
planets, our faces, bright with the dust of the stars, looking up to a thousand
pink roses flying like comets high above these orphaned islands.

Source: 100 Pink Poems Para Kay Leni (2022). Manila: San Anselmo Press., p.
158.

Joel Vega is the author of Drift, winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Best Poetry in
English. His poems have appeared in various literary journals in the U.S., U.K., Germany, The
Netherlands, France, and Austria. He lives in Arnhem, the Netherlands, where he works as a
freelance editor.