No Cream Nor Sugar Is My Coffee
(Poem –modified English version of “Kape Ko”y Walang Krema Ni Asukal”)
no cream nor sugar is my coffee
black as the grieving night
when thick, rolling clouds
kiss the saucer moon
bitter as the miserable lives
of people franz fanon called
“the wretched of the earth”
what maxim gorky said
dwell “in the lower depths”
yes, bitter as my coffee
their lives oppressed
jailed forever under the bridge
or genuflecting, dreaming
on the putrid shoulders
of tripa de gallina
and canal de la reina
or in murky, cramped slum areas.
black is the night
like my dark coffee
in the narrow streets of despair
in the sty and barungbarong
beside some forsaken garbage dumps
in the dimly-lighted parks
where fallen bodies cling
to the eternal
elusive hope on the grass
black is the night
in the breakwater of life
as angry waves pound
on the heaving, mournful breasts
of lingering, everlasting miseries.
bitter is life
like my coffee, unsugared, uncreamed
bitter in the lips of a child
whose abdomen swells
though in it only air dwells
bitter in the black nipples
of a praying, emaciated wife
bitter in the mouth
of a cursing father
whose flesh devoured
by grease and machine
in hungry factories of greed
bitter in the hatred-filled eyes
of a sad, lonely man
whose blood is being sucked
by the parched earth not his
so the grains of palay
in fields of enslaving gloom
would glitter like gold
in the horizon of discontent
and the sugarcanes would vomit
sweet, delicious, sticky sap
amidst the cries of the working class.
when will my coffee be sweet?
when will its black color fade?
when will cream and water
make love and mix?
yes, my coffee has no cream nor sugar
bitter as the lives
of those crucified by tears of grief
yes, my coffee tastes
like grounded vile
in a rotten society
paradise of a chosen few
but rebellious shadows in the night
will not cease rekindling the fire
till the flames engulf the demigods
and, yes, at last,
our coffee will be sugared and creamy
alas, at last,
it will then taste like honey!
