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My father served there in the early twenties. From his book “Old Soldiers’ Drums.”

ASAWA NI AKO

(A Song for All the Little Sunshines)

In the outskirts of Manila
In the barrio called Pasay
The soldiers used to bogao
Just the same as you and I.
The dalagas used to gather
By the banyan near the pool
Where the carabao used to wallow
And the behos used to drool.
It was there that first I met her;
Anacleto was her name;
Dark she was, her hair was darker;
Where she used to search for game.
Four feet tall in red chinelas
When she wasn’t squatted down
And she coyly shook the dirt off
Of her peso cotton gown.
But I left her there forever
For I couldn’t stand the strain.
Thank gawd! I left Manila
And my GuGu wife or twain! Adios!

******

OUTCASTS

Outcast men of the world are we,
Sunk in the depths of iniquity
Detested by all and loved by none.
A blot on the face of the kindly sun.
Men of training and breeding and birth
Who knew full well what the game was worth
Who played their hands — and lost —
— and then
Lost themselves from the world of men.

We hid ourselves in the Island world
Where the flashing coils of the “Snake” are curled
We sought the depths to hide our shame.
The “thing” we had made of an honored name.
We swam the Bay in the early dawn
But the Shark came not, and we lived on.
We sought the end in the bolo’s steel
But hearts wounds live, while flesh wounds heal.

We went unarmed to the Moro’s “jil”
But they called us “mad” and they would not kill.
And the Padre came with his tale of Grace
But we knew better, and laughed in his face.

We twined our hearts in a woman’s hair
Then tried to forget in the din and glare
Of a “tienda down on the opal bay
Where many men come and some men stay.

We lost ourselves in the Army then,
Our identity merely “Enlisted Men”
But in the dusk, when the shadows start to crawl
In their weird, wild dance on the barracks wall
A ghastly pageant that comes to stir
Our memory again to what we were
And we bow our heads and stifle a cry
For we don’t know how and we’ll never know why.