16/11/2020
Roderick C. Salazar Jr
November 12 at 5:25 PM ·
ULYSSES: And Not To Yield
ULYSSES: from the poem that is titled by your name
I take words to fling at the storm also called ULYSSES:
AND NOT TO YIELD.
You, King of Ithaca, Greek hero of the Trojan War, by
your cunning you helped end the long war you could not
win till then. You convinced your fellow kings to pretend
you were giving up and were sailing away. But you left
behind a huge wooden horse filled with your bravest.
The Trojans took into their city the gigantic gift they
presumed was your going-away offering to the gods, and
celebrated, drinking themselves to sleep. Then you crept out
of the horse, opened the Trojan gates and all of you pounced
on the drunken Trojan warriors, reducing Troy to ruins.
This we read in Homer’s Iliad.
In Homer’s other epic, Odyssey, taken from your Greek name
Odysseus, we read how the restless you sail back to Ithaca,
to your wife Penelope and son Telemachus, you soon grow
tired of your kingly duties and you want once more, though
old yourself, to sail away again in search of adventure.
Lord Alfred Tennyson puts words into your mouth:
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides, and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find,
AND NOT TO YIELD.”
We, the Philippines, battered once again by a typhoon,
this time, one that bears your name, we use your own words
in Tennyson’s work and declare WE SHALL NOT YIELD.
We are battered, wet, hungry, homeless, but NOT HOPELESS.
WE SHALL NOT YIELD.
I ask you, Ulysses: Odysseus, take your storm away from us.
You want adventure beyond the sunset? Go then, go, go away.
And let your friends be as rear guard like in battles of yore:
Ask Achilles, Patroclus, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Ajax and all
your mighty warrior friends to guard us against incoming storms
already named but awaiting the breath of Neptune or Poseidon:
VICKY, WARREN, YOYANG, ZOSIMO: May they not come to be.
Ask all your gods to help you defend us who know your name.
And I ask my God who is mightier than all of your gods together.
To Him I pray to spare us more misery of storm and flood.
I ask Him to make you, heroes of myth and legend, to become
angels keeping the winds and rains and flood away from us.
O Lord, our God, King of Heaven and earth, please hear us.
Our streets are flooded again, many of our homes are lost.
Our highways have become rivers, our rivers bigger streams.
O Lord, have mercy.
We own our faults and our sins. Those of us who still don’t,
please inspire to repent and reform. Make quarry operators stop
their digging of the foundation of our mountains and hills.
Make lumber companies reforest what they have denuded.
Help us see that poor as we may be, we also are responsible for
the clogging of our streams. We cannot throw our waste anywhere
and expect that when the rains come our debris will just flow away.
And the whole hall is reduced to silence pondering the point.
“Now, should we demand an explanation from Our Lord?
Question His method? Or should we merely enjoy the benefits?
“Well, I don’t think the good Lord wants us to question too much. “Isaiah Chapter 55, Verse 8:
‘My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are My ways your ways.”
And I think what He basically means by that is:
I AM mysterious, folks. LIVE WITH IT.”
He ends his speech. Rowan Sebastian Atkinson. MR. BEAN.
The Reverend Walter Goodfellow. A jolly good fellow indeed.
Indeed, O Lord, Our God. There are many things we do not know.
We believe in You. We love you. Though we do not always understand. But we live with it.
We trust You. Now. We trust You. Always.
In the midst of our drowning in flood and tears, in sorrow, we trust
that You love us. You are with us. You let the storms come but You
allow us to reach out to one another in love, come this typhoon
and that, come Quintana, Rolly, Siony, Tonyo, Ulysses or Vicky,
Warren, Yoyang or Zosimo, come what may, come what when.
Our lights conk out, but You remain our Light.
We lose our way but You are our Way, our Truth, our Life.
With You in us and around us, we rise from our falls.
With Ulysses, not the storm, but Tennyson’s hero, we affirm that
though indeed we are made weak by time and fate, we are
“strong in will to strive, to seek, to find …
AND NOT TO YIELD.
