Of Peace, Poetry and Passion

 January 9, 1990

Of Peace, Poetry and Passion

As in the past, I would have declared yesterday, Three Kings, the official end of the Christmas season at home, had I not chanced upon Divina Paredes-Japa’s article in the Sunday Globe making a case for January 8, the feast of the baptism of Jesus, as the more appropriate date. So my Douglas Fir, brittle brush as it has become, comes down today (this was written Jan. 8) instead.

Not that anyone really paid much attention to it these past three weeks. Indeed it was the one thing in my household that enjoyed a modicum of peace – for that read oblivion – during this period of agitated incertitude. Now I consign it to the trash bin outside the house, where perhaps it will wait another month before our garbage men deign to notice it, as I, like most, struggle to catch up with the rest of my life.

So what gives currently? Going by the papers, peace in our time. A pooled front page editorial on the subject the Citizens’ Crusade for Democracy and Peace with Justice (now isn’t that a mouthful?) wanted it to be, but I see that only four dailies (aside from this one) I subscribe to have obliged.

They are, in order of fervor rather than sobriety, the Inquirer, the Globe, the Star, and the Times. For the benefit of those who read none other than the national newspaper (Malaya of course), some excerpts from the fiery pens of the nation’s top editorial writers:

“How long must we continue living under the gun? Why do we allow armed men to rule our lives?...How long will we tolerate this situation where a military maniac with an itchy trigger finger has his bloody hands on the throat of an entire nation? – Inquirer (though verily I am reminded of the famous Oratio contra Catilinam: “Quousque tandem abutere patientia nostra…”)

Last December 1, the military destroyed in one morning what had taken our people three and a half years to build…The military today is the greatest single, immediate threat to democracy in the progress of our country.” (underscoring supplied) – Globe, the COS’ paper of choice, which by the way is also bent on ferreting out who’s been doing violence to the national budget.

“We have too long languished under the spectre of darkness, we have too long been hostage to bloodshed and violence. We are threatened on all sides by enemies of the people. The Marxist Left who would impose their godless ways on our deeply religious culture. The fascist Right who would bring back the greed and power lust of the tyrant. And the misguided mutineers who for the glitter of gold or misplaced self-righteousness would bring us back to an even more stultifying Dark Age.” – Star

But the editorial which appeals to me the most is the Times’:

“With mindless profligacy, we have squandered the legacies of nationhood and nobility won for us by our forbears who knew what love of country truly meant and unstintingly gave the fullest measure of their humanity to its fulfilment. In our time, and by our own hands, the shining bequest of almost a hundred years of struggle towards freedom and unity has become so much dross.”

But e pluribus unum, as Soliven Maximus reminded us yesterday, “We rush to speak for democracy. But we reserve the right to express our loyalty to it in words of our own choosing.”

For violence is not only mutiny, I dare suggest. Making the masses submit meekly to food prices that are scandalous as our elite fritter millions away of parties, or letting them queue in the rain for hours while the rich and powerful zoom around in Benzes and Pajeros: these marginalize and do violence to our people as well.

Another 4,000 of our countrymen join the ranks of the poor, the hungry and the homeless everyday. That is not gentle peace. That is oppressive tyranny and cruel slavery, for which in the end there will be more than just another coup to pay, trust me.

Meanwhile I am for poetry and passion, as in this priceless gem from Chesterton titled “The Great Minimum” that I have decided to adopt as my mantra for the decade:

“It is something to have wept as we have wept/ It is something to have done as we have done,/ It is something to have watched when all men slept,/ And seen the stars which never see the sun.

“It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,/ Although it break and leave the thorny rods,/ It is something to have hungered once as those/ Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

“To have seen you and your unforgotten face,/ Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,/ Pure as white lilies in a watery space,/ It were something, though you went from me today.

“To have known the things that from the weak are furled,/ Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;/ It is something to be wiser than the world,/ It is something to be older than the sky.

“In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,/ And fatted lives that of their sweetness tire,/ In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,/ It is something to be sure of a desire.

“Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;/ Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen;/ Let thunder break on man and beast and bird/ And the lightning. It is something to have been.”

To one and all at the threshold of the new millennium: Sursum corda!