21st CENTURY LITERATURE OF THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD

Names: ____________________________ Date: ______________________

Program and Section: _________________ Instructor: Paul Gasalatan

"Isang Dipang Langit" (Amado V. Hernandez)

An Arm’s Length of Heaven

(translated from Filipino)

I was incarcerated by a cruel leader,

asking for the price of my crushed spirit,
the body is weak, so I must surrender,
if spirit is defeated it embraced defeat

I was cornered in a fortress of brute gallows:

stone, steel, bullet, guard’s enmity, the constant knife;
I was spewed out from the entire world of sorrows
And taken for dead when life has not escaped life

In a tiny window, all one can penetrate

is an arm’s length of heaven full of bitter tears,
selfish panorama or a wounded heart’s gate,
flag of my wantonness, kerchief of sneers.

As knife the thunder of guardsman’s rolling eyes,

Fixed on locked door no body dares the length;
A prisoner’s yell in the adjacent sty
Was as a cavern animal’s trapped in its strength.

The entire day was chained to the entire structure,

Dragged as steel ball by shod foot pulped and bloody;
The entire night is a tent of grief and injure,
by the casket which was the only sanctuary.

Once, simple steps trace the cordoned blockade,

The hooks of steel chains are scraping concrete;
21st CENTURY LITERATURE OF THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD

under pale sun put out to dry and to degrade,

a thousand shadows spat out by darkest pit

Once the night was suddenly brought to a scare

by an alarm – an escape! – gunshots were flying;
Once the old bell was pealing out in black despair,
in the death chamber, someone’s breath is escaping.

And now this is my only constant universe -

Interred in prison, graveyard of the living;
a decade, or two, or all of the coming scores
of all of my life here consumed while I’m fading.

But my spirit shall conquer fear, ordeal

My blood veins shall still run, my blood flow’s still a stream:
A prison is but part of dealing with evil,
To be imprisoned is to crush surrender’s dream.

Gods and men are not forever asleep

the oppressed shall not be the oppressed of every chance,
this grave injustice has a battle cry to keep,
As long as there’s Bastille, a country exacts vengeance.

And tomorrow, in the same window, I shall see

from the arm’s length of heaven without a single tear,
the provident sun shall rise a shining victory ...
my freed self shall come down to greet myself free!

ACTIVITY 1: What does each stanza convey? (From 1-5 stanza)? Explain 2-3 sentences. 5
points each.

1st STANZA:
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21st CENTURY LITERATURE OF THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD

2ND STANZA:
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3RD STANZA:
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4TH STANZA:
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5TH STANZA:
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ACTIVITY 2: Cite any phrase from the poem from stanza 6 to 11, underline and identify the
kind of figures of speech and describe its literal meaning. (15 points)

PHRASE FIGURES OF SPEECH MEANING

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.