Who Will Gather Grass? Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

The ramshackle dap-ay is deathly cold, alone
Aching, waiting for young hands to harvest cogon
Its thatch is falling; soft rain flows through crevices
Sooty walls are decaying as a history recedes
No wise man to keep the fireplace smoldering
No boys with thin twigs, at aged soles scratching
While he tells legends of courage and rectitude
No assembly of sages to summon plenitude,
To unbridle from the olden spring of wisdom
Inspirations to honor equity, truth, freedom
Empty, but for termites munching its dark walls
Still but for the eerie silence of ghosts’ footfalls

The dap-ay bred a people with morals now unheard
Water and grains from one’s sweat must be shared
To squirrel food for gain was the presage of a fall
The grief and joy of one was the grief and joy of all
Hedges must be respected, so too life in any form
A good turn deserved no prize; it was but the norm
No wrong went unpunished lest it defamed the land
The tall scepter of power was raised with even hand
To allocate harvest, to stonewall greed, debauchery
Kabunian was praised for ubiquitous truth and equity
For every birth, union, sometimes even for death
Now on its frail, last leg, the dap-ay gasps for breath

Who will fix the thatch? The young are indisposed
By their dogged pursuit of education in the schools
Where they learn to be ashamed of their pedigree,
By their cry for justice whose wheels grind leisurely
In halls where truth may be no less a merchandise,
By their resolute search for God in bank accounts,
Or when empty, in churches that often to them tell
Their forebears’ ways - what short, easy trails to hell
The grandparents are dying, too weak to hold a cane
Too tired to tell folktales to their blasé grandchildren
Who will gather grass, repair a culture’s thatch?
Who will save the dap-ay, its falling glory catch?

(The dap-ay is a structure of the Kankanaeys -indigenous people in the Philippines- where the council of elders make decisions on a village's political and socio-economic concerns. In the early days, its roofing was cogon grass. These days, however, the existing dap-ays have tin roofs, which may signify the deterioration of the Kankanaey culture.)