1st Literary Piece

Silent Trails
By M. de Gracia Concepcion

Silent are the trails of Benguet hills,

When the mist veils the sun --
Even when the wind stirs the ferns
And the bamboo brakes sings
Their echoeS murmurs,
And the laden Benguet women pass,
Beating, their pakkongs
In cadenced monotones--
Even so，
These trails are lonely…
And deep are the ravines
And higher still the skies.

1. You have to imagine this scene. Where is Benguet? What image of it is conveyed by the poetic
representation? State it in your own words, as it were, re-living the scene.

2. Why, or how, do the sounds as poetically depicted - the sound of wind and bamboo brakes, the sound of the
pakkong (the bamboo buzzer in Ibaloy)- heighten or intensify one's impression of the silence?

3. What significance do you see in the sort of transformation of sensation/ perception that occurs from "Silent"
to "lonely”? That significance relates to a basic fact about the poem's observer's state of consciousness.

4. "The mist veils the sun," says the poem's observer. How may you relate its meaningfulness to the concluding
observation: “And deep are the ravines, /And higher still the skies"?

(a) First, be a "literalist of the imagination." Consider the poetic representation as simply an objective
description -someone's impression of a landscape in Benguet.

(b) You may also try a metaphorical/symbolic reading of all those poetic images of the landscape
(mist, ravines; “laden Benguet women beating their pakkong"). Here one's reading may only be clever and
ingenious, and yet also plausible insofar as it relates to what the poetic text appears to convey (it is, in short,
conjectural).