12-Daniel

CONTACT by Christian Ryan Ram Malli

- As a whole, it can be inferred that the poem is talking about the author’s experiences during the period of COVID-19 in the Philippines, since it is stated in the text that “The guard doesn’t let him in, because he doesn’t have a face shield…” indicating that this poem is made during the height of the pandemic, where it was required to wear a face shield. The part in the poem “If I will define myself using my country, then I am a prayer growing unkind” shows one of the experiences of the author during this time.

        describe them based on what is               provided in the poem?

- The persona in the poem is the author. This can be seen through the use of pronouns such as I, my,, and we. This suggests that the poem is written in the first person view.
- It can also be said that the poem is written in a third person omniscient view through the presence of the words him, his, and them.
- They can be described as pessimistic since they view the Philippines government as incompetent and corrupt. This can be seen in the text “Now pillage his barangay… rumbling will be his sole condition”, where it is said that when corruption is used as the pillar of a man’s bone as well as leaving him without food for a week, the only thing left after would be his hunger, which signifies the prevalence and destructiveness of corruption our country.

       meaning of the poem?

-It can be said that the language used is indirect and subtle with different types of figurative language to be able to convey the magnitude and extensive problems our country is facing.
-Some figures of speech and imagery are used and seen in the following parts of the poem. “Aimless anger is a wail, a noise scattered across the ages” is a metaphor stating that anger without a particular goal is forgotten, “Tell the war there is no need… a memory too old to discover”, is personification and tells us we are our own villain and it has always been this way, “If I will define myself using my country, then I am a prayer growing unkind” is personification which means our country is slowly deteriorating and straying away from its intended function, and “There is what we can touch, and the rest is contact” is imagery, indicating the things we can do to make a change, while there are some things that we will just have to live with.

        reflected in and by this poem? 

- The poem tells us that our world is a dangerous place that cannot easily be made safe as said in the text “If I will define myself using my country, then I am a prayer growing unkind”. It is also trying to tell us that we are limited in our capabilities to make a change since our problems are too extensive and embedded in our culture as shown in the text “It doesn’t matter who is at fault;... and the rest is contact.”.

- Our world can be seen in this poem through the problems presented in subtle ways using different comparisons. “Aimless anger is a wail, a noise scattered across the ages.” talks about protests and their impact which gets forgotten after sometime. “Now, pillage his barangay… rumbling will be his sole condition” suggests that corruption is extremely destructive and common. Lastly, “He catches my eyes, the contour of them… The guard doesn’t let him in” reveal the presence of racism, since the teenager is judging them from their appearance and it is suggested that the author is of asian descent due to the use of the word contour. When put together, it can be said that the teenager is assuming the author is Chinese since he was staring at the author’s eyes and nothing else and because COVID-19 came from China, there is a stigma that one will get infected by the virus if they are close to a Chinese person.

- From my point of view, as COVID-19 is still with us to this day, this text is still relevant to the world today because we will have to learn how to live with this virus, but that does not mean we will have to endure living with the many problems our society has. Even before the outbreak, the world was already facing many problems such as corruption, racism, and lack of unity. These problems were left to grow by many, which resulted in numerous issues and complications as time went by, an example being the war between Ukraine and Russia and the many political and economic relations being shaken and broken due to the dispute between two countries.

- In my honest opinion, it took me 10 times reading the poem over and over again before I started to understand what it meant, and when I did, I was surprised with what the poem was trying to convey. These problems listed were not exclusive to the Philippines as they were also present around the world, whether third world or highly industrialized countries. The overall tone of the poem is pessimism and the mood it instills in me is frustration since as I am reading, I see all these issues in our society then I reach the end of the text which is telling us that we have little to no influence to be able to make a change. I can relate to this since no matter what we do, voting for president, showing kindness, or recycling our waste, It feels like we are just wasting our efforts since we do not see the fruits of our labor. Using the example above, I recycle my waste everyday and reduce my carbon footprint as much as I can, yet I watch the news and see that global warming is worsening by the day. It feels really frustrating yet I continue to do it hoping that one day I can say that my efforts were not wasted.