Labor leader & Anakpawis (Workers’ Party) partylist congressman Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran, 1933-2008

All photos by www.arkibongbayan.org

In Memoriam labor leader and Anakpawis (Workers’ Party) partylist representative Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran

Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa (“Love for the Motherland”) by Andres Bonifacio, excerpted (rough translation for non-Filipinos by blog admin)

 “Kayong nalagasan ng bunga’t bulaklak

Kahoy niyaring buhay na nilanta’t sukat

Ng bala-balaki’t makapal na hirap

Muling manariwa’t sa baya’y lumiyag

 

(Those of you with felled  flowers and blossom

Trees that gave life but withered in a sudden

Sapped by multiple  hardship, persecution, suffering

Take heart, now they bloom in the motherland’s bosom)

 

Ipakahandog-handog ang buong pag-ibig

Hanggang sa may dugo’y ubusing itigis

Kung sa pagtatanggol buhay ang kapalit

Ito’y kapalaran at tunay na langit

 

(Fully offering of  all of our love

Even if the cost, the last ounce of our blood

If in this struggle, the price is our life

It is our path, our real bliss.)

 

Aling pag-ibig pa ang hihigit kaya

Sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila

Gaya ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa

Aling pag-ibig pa? Wala na nga wala

 

(Is there any greater love

Any purer love… any truer love

Than love for the motherland?

Is there any other love?

Truly unsurpassed, truly no other.)

 

“Cloths of Heaven”

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Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven   

 by W.B. Yeats 

          Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, 

          Enwrought with golden and silver light,  

         The blue and the dim and the dark cloths  

         Of night and light and the half light,   

           I would spread the cloths under your feet:

           But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

          I have spread my dreams under your feet; 

         Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.