“One cannot write unless one has known satiety, debauchery, and the intimacy of desire, and can remember them “in moments of tranquility.”
— Luis G. Dato, Philippines Herald Mid-week Magazine in April 6, 1932
By Luis G. Dato Manila, city of noise,All day the wheels have dinned in my earsThe cry for money, cause of all the noise,All counters, offices, markets, bodegas, piers, movie-houses, hotels,Repeat with variations the self-same theme,As mosquitoes at night din…
By Luis G. Dato Shouting in the sky-walled air.The rig-driver’s voice is husky and his throat is hoarse with yelling and shouting in the sky walled-air.He jerks the flesh-cutting reins and he dangles the sharp, blood-dripping lash.The horse is hungry.The legs…
By Luis G. Dato Manila is a woman smiling through a mask of paint,Breasts irradiant with cosmic challengesAnd invitations to the rivers and the meadows of the explorable infinite,An urgency at an intersectionWith a clique of clubbing ruffians from behind.…
By Luis G. Dato Here in the grass grows not longerThe eye to soothe, tired feet to cool –For hills are blocks and masonry,For lake exiguous swimming pool. There are no haunts – around the cornerDeath gasps in screeching brakesOr…
By Luis G. Dato Out where the wild vines spreadUpon the winding walls,I hear old madrigalsAnd music from the dead. There the grasses hangTheir canopy of leaves,Which oft at dawn receivesMatins the mayas sang. Where peace holds swaysOn mounted mossy…
By Luis G. Dato He left for Manila one day in April, Said good-bye to the principal street in town,To the tall, austere cathedral beside it. At home the evening before,His mother a seedling planted, He stayed in the city…
By Luis G. Dato As from a sleep profound,A long time in strange ground,I woke to find my soul,Young as when faint with thirstOf love I knew it first.Invincible and whole. And this was all so strange,This change – anulling…
By Luis G. Dato From streets and the dirty places,The frost of the forgetful facesI have found me a refuge, the past;From the heat and the dust, the bitterForgetfulness, it is far sweeterTo seek the soothing calm of the past.…
Mi Ultimo Pensamiento, a translation of Jose Rizal’s original Spanish Mi Ultimo Adios to English by Luis G. Dato in 1927. By Luis G. Dato Farewell, dear isles beloved of sea and sky, Where once we envisioned the gleam of…
