Through a Window

By Dr Abe V Rotor

Left, author visits the War Museum; right, rice shipment is prepared for export to the Philippines. Vietnam leads Thailand, China, India and Pakistan in supplying our country's imported rice which is on the average one million tons yearly. This is roughly equivalent to 10 percent of our annual requirement, meaning we are always short of rice production by 10 percent, when we used to export rice to Vietnam and the mentioned countries in the seventies and early eighties. Today, the Philippines is the number one rice importer in the world. Our average production is lower than the world's average. Food security is a principal measure of independence.


NOTE: On this day, 111th anniversary of Philippine Independence from Spain, I have chosen this poem about Vietnam to reflect on. The Vietnam war was considered the worst war since WW II. Millions died in that war, untold sufferings are beyond words to describe, human dignity, world order, national pride, human rights were trespassed or violated. The country was left in ruins. Years of isolation followed. Sanction was led by the US, depriving the newly independent country of help from the outside world. But like a Phoenix bird, Vietnam rose to become one of the fastest developing countries not only in Asia but in the whole world, with 7 to 12 percent yearly Gross Domestic Product, second only to China.

Through the window of an airplane,
I see a shroud of smoke turn into rain;
This is Vietnam now.
Its pains may linger, its wound a scar,
Blessed are its plains, golden in the sun.
Blessed are its people, victims yet victors
Of a David and Goliath war.

Through the window of the mind,
Through the window of a Western eye;
The world was blind for long, but not now.
As the one-eyed Nelson defied order
Cupping the wrong eye.

Through Milton’s window when lost
The sight, clearer is the view, deeper,
Deeper is the sense of seeing,
And the sense of being.

Through the window of a posh hotel
Over tree tops gracing the view,
Swaying and singing in the breeze,
While the city is buried in mist.
Time hangs in the air with ease.

For time knows all, cures all, forgets all,
Yet indelible is the lesson of mankind
That lust never lasts, it ends in fatal fall.
And pain endured is glory’s gain.

Through the window of ones soul,
Has spirituality lost its meaning?
Ask the Vietnamese toiling the fields
With a grave by his side.
Sans cross, sans tombstone,
Only a whisper of a name.

It is an old window I am seeing through,
My own, through a politics of disorder,
Greed and indifference, its spawn.
How can I raise a chin to greet you,
After you have mended your own?

I must have slept too long in comfort
And ease in plenty and play, in freedom,
Believing in a god I call bahala na,
Existential to my needs and caprice;
While you struggled for sanity
With a god by your side fighting,
And brought Olympus down.

I see you fighting again,
Opening your doors to conquer the world
With booming economy, a new valor,
To win another war.

x x x

NOTE: The author was a visiting professor at Ho Chi Mingh University of Science and Technology in Ho Chi Mingh City, formerly Saigon, Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 2006.

Living the Nature, Volume 3, All Rights Reserved