Another Invitation to the Pope to Visit Tondo

Emmanuel Torres won the Outstanding Young Men award for literature in 1961, started the Ateneo Arts Club in the same year, and was curator of the Art Gallery from 1960-2001. 

This poem talks about a time during the Marcos regime when the pope came for a visit. Squatters areas were whitewalled, possibly in order to "make an impression" on the Pope. He saw right through it, however, and insisted on meeting a family from the area. The poem reflects the more realistic angle of the story, a mockery of the Church, in some ways, by alluding to doctrines. 

Ma. Therese Boniface Roxas

ANOTHER INVITATION TO THE POPE TO VISIT TONDO 

Emmanuel Torres 

Next time your Holiness slums through our lives, 

we will try to make our poverty exemplary. 

The best is a typhoon month. It never fails 

To find us, like charity, knocking on 

all sides of the rough arrangements we thrive in. 

Mud shall be plenty for the feet of the pious. 

We will show uoi how we pull things together 

from nowhere, life after life, 

prosper with children, whom you love. To be sure, 

we shall have more for you to love. 

We will show you where the sun leaks on 

our sleep, 

on the dailiness of piece meals and wages 

with their habit of slipping away 

from fists that have holes for pockets. 

We will show you our latest child with a sore 

that never sleeps. When he cries, 

the dogs of the afternoon bark without stopping, 

and evening darkens early on the mats. 

Stay for supper of turnips on our table 

since 1946 swollen with the same hard tears. 

The buntings over our one and only window 

shall welcome a short breeze. 

And lead prayers for the family that starves 

and stays together. If we wear roasries round 

our nexks 

it is not because they never bruise our fingers, 

(Pardon if we doze on a dream of Amen.) 

But remember to remember to reward us 

with something . . . more lush, greener than all 

the lawns of memorial parks singing together. 

Our eyes shall belss the liveliness of dollars. 

Shed no tears, please, for the brown multitudes 

who thicken on chance and feast on leftovers 

as the burning garbage smuts the sky of Manila 

pile after pile after pile. 

Fear not. Now there are only surreal assassins 

about who dream of your death in the shape 

of a flowering kris.