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"I am confident that all of us will see brighter days ahead because we believe in the indomitable spirit of the Filipino."

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"I am confident that all of us will see brighter days ahead because we believe in the indomitable spirit of the Filipino."

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People wake to a sight of death,

giving birth to another world.

They all walk searching for what

they know not, and they stride

over dead bodies, pass by

ruined houses, bump unto men,

swathed in mud and wounds,

wandering in wobbly knees.

The way sets unclear directions--

a maze of all fallen and fragmented.

The trees, skeletons of branches.

The sky, a whole blank sheet.

Still they move on and in all

This walking dawns their waking.

Haiyan

November 8, 2013

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Waking and Walking is a short poem written by Yvonne M. Esperas, campus director of the Philippine Science High School Eastern Visayas. The poem was featured in Rina Garcia Chua's book entitled "Sustaining the Archipelago: an Anthology of Philippine Ecopoetry."

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Poem was composed in November of 2013. Yet, it is nonetheless able to cement its relevance in the present by laying bare the fallacies of a statement that was made eight years later.

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Taking from the date of the poem's composition and the "Haiyan" label inputted in the poem's footer, it can be inferred that the poem is a reflection of the daily spectacle that awaited typhoon Haiyan (known domestically as typhoon Yolanda) survivors come daytime.

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Bouncing off from what I wrote above, it is difficult to pinpoint a single persona in a text that resounds the grief of entire bodies of people. However, it would be a reasonable deduction to conclude that the persona is an omniscient entity narrating the daily routine of typhoon Haiyan survivors. This is owing to the fact that the poem was written in the third person point of view, and also since the persona is able to make comments on the survivors' fate itself (as evident in "this walking dawns their waking").

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"People wake to a sight of death,"

This line's most apparent characteristic is its extreme, hyperbolized wording, which effectively gives life (ironically) to the topic matter. The situation of the typhoon Haiyan survivors is so desolate that it warrants being labelled as a byproduct of something as abstract and philosophical as "death."

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"giving birth to another world."

This line instills a humanity into the receiver of the action (the "other world" in question). The line adds a fantastic component to the sight that awaits the typhoon's survivors,  implying that the reality of their surroundings is something so unfathomably terrible to such a point that it is akin to something entirely out of this world.

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"They all walk searching for what they know not,"

To search implies an effort to achieve a solid goal and to know what one is attempting to find. The addition of "for what they know not," however, obscurifies that definition, and allows the persona to bear down on typhoon victims' lived experiences of searching for something abstract and uncertain, all under one unyielding desire for a better future.

"men swathed in mud and wounds,"

Being "swathed" is also often spoken of when one is strapped with or bound in bandages, an item used for its restorative properties. Thus, to say that one is swathed in "wounds" is a contradiction of this putative impression and also lends to the motif of confusion that is prevalent in the text.

"The way sets unclear directions"

To know the way usually entails a sense of direction and a clarity of mind. That the way that has been lain for typhoon Haiyan's survivors only further blurs their perception and the plans they have loosely set for themselves emphasizes the severity of their current situation. It also contributes much to the text's themes of confusion and chaos.

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"men swathed in mud and wounds"

Being "swathed" is a characteristic often attributed to infant children, especially those wrapped in swaddling clothes. This imagery helps readers construct a well-formed image of the men who have been plunged into a pit of almost inhuman physical exertion and suffering, also providing them with a gateway into learning about the many illnesses and injuries typhoon victims are liable to incur.

"a maze of all fallen and fragmented."

Esperas' description of the way ahead as a "maze of all fallen and fragmented" has a clear metaphorical undertone because it implies that the typhoon's victims have nothing to cling to except the shadows of the structures and lifestyles they had once become so deeply acquainted with. All that stands before them is a practically unnavigable hodgepodge literally of the debris left by the typhoon and figuratively of the despair and isolation brought about by their bid to challenge the odds and stay alive.

"The trees, skeletons of branches. The sky, a whole blank sheet."

Before ending, Esperas presents readers with a clincher that drives home the poem's dreary and pessimistic mood. It also ties into the previous lines ("The way sets unclear directions--a maze of all fallen and fragmented") and fuels the idea of losing what one once had and making something out of all that is now "fallen;" the lush trees are now mere outlines of their former glory and the sky does not have any clouds in which the people can seek comfort. The road ahead is completely bleak and there is no course of action in sight for typhoon Haiyan's survivors.

"This walking dawns their waking."

Two metaphors can be derived from this line.

The "walking" being described in this line is not exactly a reflection of the action of walking that the characters in the poem have been carrying out, but is instead a metaphor for the historical and cyclical pattern of adversity and destitution that Filipinos have had to wrestle with ever since colonial times.

"Waking" on the other hand is a metaphor for the attainment of the hope that Filipinos have clung onto ever since they were introduced to pain. Quite literally, it is the fuel that singlehandedly enables Filipinos to fight. Esperas' description of it in this text gives it the opportunity to appeal directly to the typhoon's victims, telling them that though suffering and hardship are part and parcel of their daily life, they can one day rise from these if "[s]till they move on."

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Visual imageries of death and desolation are spread thickly across the text, be it literally and unequivocally in lines like "they stride over dead bodies" or more ambiguously in "[t]he trees, skeletons of branches." Such details add to the graveness of the dramatic situation, while also injecting a much needed familiarity that can help readers (especially foreign ones) direct their sympathy towards the typhoon's victims and find something on which they can piggyback their opinions.

Furthermore, the lines "[t]hey all walk searching for what they know not" as well as "[t]he way sets unclear directions--a maze of all fallen and fragmented" effectively encapsulate the hysteria and mystification that dogs the steps of all natural disaster survivors; it is not a matter of contention that Filipinos are no stranger to hardship, but the isolation, confusion, and psychological torture wrought by this are only as terrible.

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In this poem, Esperas does not shy away from employing gritty, unsentimental imagery that many circles would flinch at and dislike. However, she evinces her capacity as a writer by somehow tying this unspeakable effigy of the human condition under one message of hope. She does so most effectively in the closing lines of the poem:

Still they move on and in all
This walking dawns their waking.

Here, we see that beyond acting as a diorama of pain and agony, the poem also serves as a reflection of hope. Before it was taken out of proportion and reduced into the harmful narrative that it is today, "resiliency" was in fact one of the Filipino's insurmountable characteristics. They have collected this sense of resiliency from the many values that are ubiquitous in the national imagination: religion, filial loyalty, togetherness and comradeship, and more. Though the path ahead is bleak, Filipinos cling onto these to safeguard their longevity and to weather any calamity that may beset them. These are what enable to them to "move on," to walk the path of dead bodies, gray skies and ruined trees, under one hope of one day "waking" to the fruition of all they had lost in the past, and everything they have worked for in the present.

In this respect, the poem is also able to touch those whom the typhoon has not directly affected, not only to rouse them to step outside of their shells of complacency and to make efforts to help those stricken by disaster, but also to hopefully provide them with a sense of direction in a time when it has been rendered more a dwindling resource than a human privilege.

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Under a pandemic where our identity, recognition of self, and perception of reality is muddled, listening to what poems like these have to comment about the truth of hardship and suffering is a gateway to retaking the past that we have been stripped off, in the same way that Haiyan's survivors have.

However, on a broader picture, the suffering that was the subject of Of Waking and Walking easily resembles, and alarmingly so, the situations of a sizable number of Filipinos across the 18 regions. Journalists, students, and lawyers are forced into dire straits due to government-sanctioned persecution, residents of Cagayan and Isabela are still reeling from the impact of typhoon Ulysses, and more.

The poem is able to secure its relevance by associating itself with the experiences of humans who exist eight years after its writing. It lends readers with an insightful commentary on the perennial issue of poverty and the fate that awaits those who are placed in the so-called "loser's corner" of society. Eight years later, it is able to put readers on their feet and prompt them to dive into the entrenched practices that enable such widespread injustice to take form.

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Seeing the text and the world in each other

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Seeing the text and the world in each other

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In this section, I would like to harp on the narrative of Filipino resiliency, which I introduced through the quote I inserted earlier.

The suffering of the working class Filipino has historically presented itself almost in a pattern: in all instances, a sluggish or negligent government response is behind it.

At the onset of Haiyan, government critics and international bodies were quick to lambaste Aquino's leadership, and rightfully so. Within the first week of Haiyan's landfall, the Aquino administration was only able to launch a tranche of 50,000 relief packs that covered only 3% of all families affected by the typhoon. Duterte has spawned a contemporary counterpart of Aquino's incompetence, most notably in his response to COVID-19, wherein he allotted more funding to superficial agencies like the NTF-ELCAC rather than to the development of contact tracing infrastructure.

Deadlier yet, however, is the government-sanctioned misinformation bred by the populist rhetoric that has been repeatedly employed by our presidents. Trivialization and reductionism are part of a culture that has its roots deeply ingrained in the country's long line of presidents. To prove my point, Aquino has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the typhoon by pointing the finger at members of his cabinet for supplying him with "faulty data" and claiming that the overall death toll of the typhoon was stretched out of proportion and "overstated." Eight years later, Duterte would mirror this behavior by saying on on March 15, 2021 that fear and unease are unwarranted because no Filipinos have contracted the virus (even though there were already 3 confirmed cases at the time), which is expounded upon in the following quote: “marami tayong dinaanang mas grabe, mas mahirap” (we have weathered more difficult circumstances than COVID-19). Of course, another such concomitant of Duterte's populist attitude is this Padlet's opening quote:

"I am confident that all of us will see brighter days ahead because we believe in the indomitable spirit of the Filipino."

Although this poem zeroes in on the tribulations of a typhoon survivor, we mustn't let that which underlies this suffering in the first place slip out of the public eye. If we had good governance and democratic policy-making measures, nobody would have to "walk" and endure this culture of injustice that is endemic to our nation. If there is one thing that this poem must impart to its readers about the world, it is that suffering, violence, and famine are part and parcel of a government that traps its people in the pangs of populism to fool them into thinking that all is well and good.

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The theme of the poem is not just a reverberation of something as oversaturated and watered down as "there is a light at the end of the tunnel," which can not do the poem nor the survivors of typhoon Haiyan justice. When one takes into consideration the backdrop against which the poem was composed, the deep Filipino quality of the poem becomes most apparent. I believe that this specific characteristic of the text made me easily identify with it. The hardship brought about by public emergencies like Haiyan is inherent to all human beings, however, as Filipinos, we have a deeply unique experience of typhoon Haiyan; through this, we are able to derive a sense of direction from the poem not only in the hopeful tone of its ending lines but also in the solidarity one usually gleans at the sight of their countrymen.

On a more intimate level, I was also able to resonate with this poem because the events of typhoon Haiyan are still fresh in my memory (amid my attempts to bury them). I remember going back to school and how the uprooted trees and overturned stalls obstructed the path I would usually take to the classroom. I also still recoil at the thought of the tone of my Visayan tita who reported to my grandparents the situation on ground and how they thought they wouldn't need to wade through waist-deep floodwaters again. In a sense, this poem was a sort of unexpected closure to those days that until now have been festering in some craggy bog in my mind that my consciousness has learned to ignore. I have not felt this sort of emotional catharsis in a long time, and I learn now that for a mind plagued with negativity, reconciliation is a medicine for which there is no substitute.