Essay (Alternative Sources of Energy)

An alternative energy, or more precisely an alternative energy source is one that may replace the current energy sources or energy, whether their lower polluting effect, or primarily for its possibility of renewal. Energy consumption is one of the major gauges of progress and welfare of society. The concept of "energy crisis" appears when energy sources from which the company supplies are exhausted. An economic model as the current operation of which depends on continuous growth requires an equally growing demand for energy. As sources of fossil and nuclear energy are finite, it is inevitable that at any given time demand can be supplied and the whole system to collapse, unless they discover and develop new methods for energy: these would be alternative energy. Together with this is that the abuse of conventional energy present today such as oil from coal combustion among other issues carry with them as progressive worsening pollution, increased greenhouse gases and perforation of the layer ozone.


Scientists are currently looking for solutions to solve this impending crisis. So they find some alternative sources that they can use. There are wind energy, hydropower, tidal energy, wave energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and biomass energy.

The Little Sampaguita (Natividad Marquez)

Little sampaguita
With the wondering eye
Did a tiny fair
Drop you where you lie?

In the witching hour
Of the tropic night 
Did the careless moonbeam
Leave you in its fight? 

Structures of Poetry

The Line: A line of poetry is not like a sentence. Just because the words are one line, it doesn’t

mean that the complete thought is finished.

When reading poetry, and you reach the end of the line and there is no punctuation

after the last word, do not pause – continue reading as you would any sentence.

·         Example:  You would read the following

   “I lie in bed fully awake. The darkness

   breathes to the pace of a dog’s snoring.

   The film is replayed to sounds

   Of an intricate blues guitar.”

     “Late Movies with Skylar”

     Michael Ondaatje  

   the same way you would read

“I lie in bed fully awake. The darkness breathes to the pace of a

dog’s snoring. The film is replayed to sounds of an intricate blues

guitar.”  

However, this does not mean that what appears on a  single line of poetry is not

important. When reading poetry, or when writing your own, pay close attention to how

the lines are being broken up. A line of poetry does not have to end when the sentence

ends, and a period or comma does not have to appear at the end of the line either. Take

a look at these examples and notice how the poets are breaking the line.

“Like wet cornstarch, I slide

   past my grandmother’s eyes. Bible

   at her side, she removes her glasses.”  

      “Refugee Ship”

      Lorna Dee Cervantes “What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families

   shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the

   avocados, babies in the tomatoes!”

      “A Supermarket in California”

      Allen Ginsberg

Caesura: Most commonly, a caesura is punctuation somewhere else other than at the end of a

line of poetry.

·         Example: “There are their fragments, all I remember of them,

wanting more knowledge of them. In the mirror and in my kids

I see them in my flesh. Wherever we are

they parade in my brain…”

      “Light”

      Michael Ondaatjie

Enjambment: When the idea or phrase in a poem is carried over from one line into the next.

·         Example: “Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones

   are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones

   in their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,

   and start their silent swinging, one by one.”

      “Reapers”

      Jean Toomer

Features of Poetry

Ancient Filipino poetry is an extension of earlier cultures of Southeast Asia, having a common Malayo-Polynesian cultural source.Poems have meaning. Poems can describe an interesting place or person, tell a story or explain feelings.

✣ Poems have sounds. Poems sound different from other types of writing. Poems may have rhyming words, a regular rhythm like music, words with repeated sounds, or even words that sound like their meaning.

✣ Poems have images. Poems create pictures in our mind, called images. Images often refer to our sense of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. An image may describe something, or it may compare one thing to another. Images help you see something as if it is really there.

✣ Poems have lines. Poems have lines that may be long or short, and can be made up of whole sentences or sentence fragments. Some poems have lines arranged in stanzas. A stanza is agroup of lines that are arranged in a definite pattern. In other poems, the lines make a picture or shape to illustrate the topic.

✣ Poems have patterns. Poems have patterns of letters, syllables and words. These patterns often help you to hear the rhythm of a poem. Some types of poems have patterns with a particular number of syllables in each line, and others have words repeated throughout the poem. As you read through this book, you will find out more about the features of poems, and how you can use them to write your own poetry.

Sources of Poetry

The purported basis of the work was the manuscript which became known as the Percy Folio. Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt. It was on the floor and Pitt's maid had been using the leaves to light fires. Once rescued, Percy would use forty-five of the ballads in the folio for his book despite claiming the bulk of it came from this folio. Other sources were the Pepys Library of broadside ballads collected bySamuel Pepys and Collection of Old Ballads published in 1723, possibly by Ambrose Philips. Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone who also found and contributed ballads.

Percy did not treat the folio nor the work in them with scrupulous care. He wrote his own notes on the folio pages, emended the rhymes and even pulled pages out of the document. He was criticised for these actions even at the time, most notably by Joseph Ritson a fellow antiquary. The folio he worked from seems to have been written by a single copyist and errors such as pan and wale for wan and pale needed correcting.

Basic Elements of Poetry

Prosody

Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to the scanning of poetic lines to show meter.

Rhythm: The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having timing set primarily by accents, syllables, or moras, depending on how rhythm is established, though a language can be influenced by multiple approaches. For example:

Japanese is a mora-timed language. 

Latin, Catalan, French and Spanish are syllable-timed languages. 

English, Russian and, generally, German are stress-timed languages. 

Chinese, Vietnamese, Lithuanian, and most Sub-Saharan languages are Tonal languages

Meter: In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. Some examples of metric system are:

Ø  Iambic pentameter. It contains five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the "iamb. It system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens. 

Ø  Dactylic hexameter. It has six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the dactyl. Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod.

Meter is often scanned based on the arrangement of "poetic feet" into lines. In English, each foot usually includes one syllable with a stress and one or two without a stress. In other languages, it may be a combination of the number of syllables and the length of the vowel that determines how the foot is parsed, where one syllable with a long vowel may be treated as the equivalent of two syllables with short vowels. The generally accepted names for some of the most commonly used kinds of feet include:

·         spondee — two stressed syllables together

·         iamb — unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

·         trochee — one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable

·         dactyl — one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables

·         anapest — two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable

·         pyrrhic - two unstressed syllables together (rare, usually used to end dactylic hexameter)\

The number of metrical feet in a line are described in Greek terminology as follows:

·         dimeter — two feet

·         trimeter — three feet

·         tetrameter — four feet

·         pentameter — five feet

·         hexameter — six feet

·         heptameter — seven feet

·         octameter — eight feet

Rhyme, Alliteration, Assonance: Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element. 

Rhyme consists of identical (hard-rhyme) or similar (soft-rhyme) sounds placed at the ends of lines or at predictable locations within lines (internal rhyme). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures. 

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables. We find alliteration in many familiar phrases and expressions such as "down in the dumps."

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words as in, "some ship in distress that cannot ever live." It is used in modern English-language poetry, and in Old French, Spanish and Celtic languages.

Rhyming Schemes: In many languages poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poet forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the use of structural rhyme is not universal. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages, in part under the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus (modern Spain).[50] Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively. Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes.

History of Poetry

Poetry as an art form may predate literacy. Many ancient works, from the Vedas to the Odyssey, appear to have been composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies. Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, rune stones and stelae.

The oldest surviving poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, now Iraq), which was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus. Other ancient epic poetry includes the Greek epics, Iliad and Odyssey, and the Indian epics, Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in "poetics" — the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as the Chinese through the Shi Jing, one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance. More recently, thinkers have struggled to find a definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Matsuo Basho's Oku no Hosomichi, as well as differences in context spanning Tanakh religious poetry, love poetry, and rap.

Context can be critical to poetics and to the development of poetic genres and forms. Poetry that records historic events in epics, such as Gilgamesh or Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, will necessarily be lengthy and narrative, while poetry used for liturgical purposes (hymns, psalms, suras and hadiths) is likely to have an inspirational tone, whereas elegy and tragedy are meant to evoke deep emotional responses. Other contexts include Gregorian chants, formal or diplomatic speech, political rhetoric and invective, light-hearted nursery and nonsense rhymes, and even medical texts.

Sa Aking mga Kababata (Dr. Jose Rizal)

Kapagka ang baya'y sadyang umiibig
sa kanyang salitang kaloob ng langit,
sanglang kalayaan nasa ring malapit,
katulad ng ibong nasa himpapawid.

Pagka't ang salita'y isang kahatulan
sa bayan, sa nayo't mga kaharian,
at ang isang tao'y katulad, kabagay
ng alinmang likha noong kalayaan.

Ang hindi magmahal sa kanyang salita'y
mahigit sa hayop at malansang isda,
kaya ang marapat ay pagyamaning kusa
na tulad sa inang tunay na pinagpala.

Ang wikang Tagalog tulad din sa Latin,
sa Ingles, Kastila't sa salitang anghel,
sapagka't ang Poong maalam tumingin
ang Siyang naggawad, nagbigay sa atin.

Ang salita natin huwad din sa iba
na may alfabeto at sariling letra,
na kaya nawala'y dinatnan ng sigwa
ang lunday sa lawa noong dakong una

The Legend of Mount Kanlaon

There once lived on the island of Negros a princess named Anina who lived a very sheltered life.

One day, Anina overheard her father talking to the kingdom's chief priestess. The priestess was frantic about a report that they could not find a single maiden who was unblemished. 

Later, Anina asked her father what it was all about, and the king finally broke down. There had long been a seven-headed dragon threatening the kingdom, and the monster could only be appeased if an unblemished maiden was sacrificed to it. 

In fear, all the women in the kingdom had cut themselves to disqualify themselves from the sacrifice. Parents cut their own baby girls so as to spare the infants from the sacrifice. But the king and the queen couldn't bring themselves to mar their daughter's beauty, and so Anina was the only remaining unscarred female in the kingdom. 


Anina did not weep. Instead, she willingly offered herself for the sacrifice. Fortuitously, on the day she was to be brought to the mountain where the dragon lived, a man calling himself Khan Laon appeared. (Khan in his language meant a noble lord.) He said he came from a kingdom far away in order to slay the dragon and spare Anina's life. 

No one believed the dragon could be killed, but Khan Laon insisted that his ability to talk to animals would help him. He asked the help of the ants, the bees and the eagles.

The ants swarmed over the dragon's body and crept under its scales to bite its soft, unprotected flesh, while the bees stung the fourteen eyes of the dragon till it was blind. The largest eagle carried Khan Laon to the mountain where he was able to easily chop off the seven heads of the writhing beast. 

In gratitude, the king gave Khan Laon his daughter Anina to be his bride, and the people named the mountain after the noble lord. 

And that is how, according to the story, Mount Kanlaon got its name. That it is a volcano is because of the spirt of the dead dragon.

Querida (Angela Manalang Gloria)

The door is closed, the curtains drawn within
One room, a brilliant question mark of light...
Outside her gate an empty limousine
Waits in the brimming emptiness of night.

She had a way of walking through concupiscence
And past the graces her fingers never twirled:
Because her mind refused the heavy burden,
Her broad feet shovelled up the world.

My Last Farewell (Jose Rizal)

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress'd,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life's best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.

On the field of battle, 'mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not--cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold of open plain, combat or martyrdom's plight,
'Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country's need.

I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour'd out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.

My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov'd face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity's long night.

If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath's warm power.

Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o'er my untimely fate sigh,
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.

Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur'd pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,
With only the dead in their vigil to see;
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
'Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

When even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark'd by never a cross nor a stone;
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o'er,
That my ashes may carpet thy earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

Then will oblivion bring to me no care,
As over thy vales and plains I sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.

My Fatherland ador'd, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e'er on high!

Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!

How my Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife (Manuel E. Arguilla)

My brother Leon was returning to Nagrebcan from far away Manila, bringing homehis young bride who had been born and had grown up in the big city. Father would not accept her for a daughter-in-law unless he taught her worthy to live in Nagrebcan.Father devised an ingenious way to find out, and waited for the result.

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick,delicate grace.She was lovely.She was tall.She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth

“You are Baldo.” She said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder.Her nails were long,but they were not painted.She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom.And a small dimple appeared momentarily high up on her cheek.

“And this is Labang,of whom I have heard so much.” She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud, and the sound of his inside was like a drum.

I laid a hand on Labang’s massive neck and said to her: “You may scratch his forehead now.”She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long curving horns.But she came and touched Labang’s forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes were half closed. And by and by, she was scratching his forehead very daintly.

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road.He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us,and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin,where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.”Maria—“ my brother Leon said.He did not say Maring.He did not say Mayang.I knew then that he had always called her Maria; and in my mind I said, “Maria,” and it was a beautiful name.”Yes,Noel” Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backwards, and it sounded much better that way.

“There is Nagrebcan, Maria” my brother said gesturing widely toward the west. She moved close to him. And after a while she said quietly: You love Nagrebcan, don’t you, Noel?

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel. We stood alone on the roadside. The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide deep and very blue above us; but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang’s white coat, which I had washed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire. He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far way in the middle of the fields a cow lowed soflty in answer.

“Hitch him to the cart, Baldo,” my brother Leon said, laughing and she laughed with him a bit uncertainly, and I saw he had put his arms around her shoulders.”Why does he make that sound?” she asked. “I have never heard the like of it.” “There is not another like it,” my brother Leon said. “I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him.”

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the vinca across Labang’s neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth was very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was a small dimple high up on her right cheek.

“If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become very jealous.” My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted for he was always like that, but I kept firm hold on his rope.He was restless and would not stand still., so that ny brother Leon had to say “Labang” again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller one on top.She looked down once on her high heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung into the cart. Oh,the fragrance of her! But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away.

“Give us the rope, Baldo,” my brother Leon said. “ Maria , set on the hay and hold on to anything.” Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instant Labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of Labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent together to one side, her skirt spread over them so that only the toes and the heels of her shoes were visible. Her eyes were on my brother Leon’s back; I saw the wind on her hair.When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.


“What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?” my brother Leon said. I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went back to where I had inhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooeded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields.When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig, which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly: “Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?”His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.

“Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Waig instead of the camino real?” His fingers bit into my shoulder.”Father- he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong.” Swiftly his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said: “And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of the Castano and the calesa.”

Without waiting forn me to answer, he turned to her and said, “Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?” He laughed and added, “Have you ever seen so many stars before?” I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across the knees. Seemingly but a man’s height above the tops of the steep banks of the Waig, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang’s coat was chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean,sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.

“Look, Noel, yonder is our star!” Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky. “I have been looking at it,” my brother Leon said. “Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?”. “Yes, Noel,” she said. “Look at it she murmured, half to herself. “It is so many times bigger than it was at Ermita beach.”The air here is clean and free of dust smoke.” So it is Noel,” she said,drawing a long breath.

“Making fun of me, Maria?”She laughed then, and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon’s hand and put it against her face.I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart, and my heart sang. Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.

“Have we far to go yet, Noel?” she asked. “Ask Baldo,” my brother Leon said,”we have been neglecting him.” “I am asking you, Baldo,”she said. Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly: “Soon we will get out of the Waig and pass into the fields. After the fields is home – Manang.” “So near already.”

I did not say anything more, because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was “Sky Sown with Stars” –the same that he and father sang when he cut hay in the fields of nights before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into him like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheel encountered a big rock, a voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes. “But it is so very wide here,” she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.

“You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don’t you?” My brother Leon stopped singing. “Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here.” With difficulty, I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while , we drove up the grassy side onto the camino real.

“-you see,” my brother Leon was explaining, “the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields, because- but I’ll be asking father as soon as we get home” “Noel,” she said. “Yes, Maria.” “I am afraid. He may not like me.” “Does that worry you still, Maria?” my brother said. “From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest tempered, gentlest man I know.”

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said “ Hoy,” calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.

I stopped Labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down, but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the bole of the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel.

The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother’s hand were: “Father – where is he?” “He is in his room upstairs,” Mother said, her face becoming serious. “His leg is bothering him again.” I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I had hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria, and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them. There was no light in Father’s room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the eastern window, and a star shone directly though it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.

“Did you meet anybody on the way?” “No, Father,” I said. “Nobody passes through the Waig at night.” He reached for his roll of tobacco and hitched himself up in the chair. “She is very beautiful, Father.” “Was she afraid of Labang?” My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm off my brother Leon around her shoulders. “No, Father, she was not afraid.” “On the way-““She looked at the stars, Father And Manong Leon sang.”

“What did he sing?” “Sky Sown with Stars.” She sang with him. He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father’s voice must have been like it when he was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside. The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in. “Have you watered Labang?” Father spoke to me. I told him that Labang ws resting yet under the barn. “It is time you watered him, my son.” My father said.

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.