"Heloise to Abelard" by Angela Manalang Gloria

That I have loved you is beyond denial.
That I have sinned thereby is not so plain.
Call me, O joy, and though your voice were phial
Of hemlock, I would drink of it again.

There is no god to make me now surrender
What startling height of folly we have known,
What now Gomorrha builded on this wonder
Of hellfire surging through our veins alone.

O heady rapture of desire forbidden,
Forbidden lips forever hunting mine!
If to my hunger you are fruit from Eden,
If to my thirst you are nepenthean wine,

If this is sin, then never will I be shriven
Who, drunk with hell, now dare the curse of heaven!

Source: Manlapaz, Edna Zapanta. Angela Manalang Gloria: A Literary Bibliography. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila UP, 1993. 36

"Poem" by Angela Manalang Gloria

(for C.)

Let the mind be steel and the heart be fallow,
Let the night and the day be one,

Let the dream be no longer a dream and a halo:
Till the crash of judgement day,
He lies, who one broke bread with November
And drank of the wine of May.

He sleeps. And though battlefields turn to clover
And bayonets honor the slain,
Though peace be a tune hummed over and over
In moonlight and sunshine and rain,

The mind is steel and the heart is fallow,
Morning and midnight are one,
The dream is no longer a dream and a halo:
Love is gone.

30 November 1946

Source: Manlapaz, Edna Zapanta, ed. The Complete Poems of Angela Manalang Gloria. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila UP, 1993. 151

"Tabernacles" by Angela Manalang Gloria

If my proud lips
Should ever wilt in wan
Despair, I shall return this way and creep
Again into
This sanctuary of fold
On fold of umber hush, and, broken, weep.

For in a dusk
As consecrate as this,
When holy moments rise upon the vast
To spread the heavy
Silence of the stars,
There shall be none to see me grovel past

The fallen towers
Of my pride: and though
My flesh should shrink from crucibles of pain
Avenging years
Will carve, I shall be spared
The scorn of pity of a world profane.

For in one garden
In Gethsemane,
In such a twilight tabernacle bared
Alone to stars
That see not, even He
One dropped in anguish . . . and no mortal cared!

27 August 1930

Source: Manlapaz, Edna Zapanta, ed. The Complete Poems of Angela Manalang Gloria. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila UP, 1993. 65

"The Invalid Looks Toward The Window" by Angela Manalang Gloria

Lord, it is hard to have to lie
Coffined in this monotony
Of four straight walls that bar me
The comradeship of earth and sky:

I know that just beyond this room
Day spreads a shawl of green and gold,
And flaunts at me one broidered fold
Through yonder window laced with bloom;

And winds must stay their eager flight
To thrust [to?] my peace their tales
Of things I love, what golden trails
My feet have known, what blue my sight

Once caught. But I, now freedom-shorn
And tucked within geometric space,
Can only turn a bitter face
From so much mockery and scorn

31 May 1930

Source: Manlapaz, Edna Zapanta, ed. The Complete Poems of Angela Manalang Gloria. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila UP, 1993. 64