The Silliman Rengga

Here's an old poem I discovered:

Silliman Beach
Random Lines written at Siliman Beach by five young poets 16^th of June 1968

Here where we leave prints running to the coves
The sea’s want of our presences is felt; like
Waves, ripples, your shriek, or the breakneck wind:
We are, we shall be, but we’re not – the lost prints
Are imaginings; our images conjured in sand
Are incomplete like tops of shells or pairless shoes.
DONEL PACIS

Sails and shoes are prints indeed, lost in the sea;
Patterns change as patterns leave the light –
But children’s voices spilling over pebbles echo
Through the jagged coves of mirthless hearts.
Yet even these will like the falling waves subside.
ELSA VICTORIA MARTINEZ

Subside, fall off like paper waves rolled out
By the sea’s typewriter carriage, the heart a battered
Machine: the single shoe stringless and tattered
EMMANUEL LACABA

Tattered too are paper plates and prosaic poems
Left in the summer aquarium. Suddenly our presences
Are days descending. We hold a snail, think of seagulls:
The ship shrills two distinct notes; the sea watches us
Draw shadows tall tailed by tense time.
CESAR MELLA JR

And so we stand, mute spectators
As the sea draws these prints –
Prints once real as salt spray
Upon our faces now lost.
AIDA CUNANAN

From Weekly Nation August 5, 1968