Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa
Aling pag-ibig pa ang hihigit kaya
sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila
gaya ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa?
Alin pag-ibig pa? Wala na nga, wala.
Ulit-ulitin mang basahin ng isip
at isa-isahing talastasing pilit
ang salita’t buhay na limbag at titik
ng isang katauhan ito’y namamasid.
Banal na pag-ibig pag ikaw ang nukal
sa tapat na puso ng sino’t alinman,
imbit taong gubat, maralita’t mangmang
nagiging dakila at iginagalang.
Pagpupuring lubos ang nagiging hangad
sa bayan ng taong may dangal na ingat,
umawit, tumula, kumatha’t sumulat,
kalakhan din nila’y isinisiwalat.
Walang mahalagang hindi inihandog
ng pusong mahal sa Bayang nagkupkop,
dugo, yaman, dunong, katiisa’t pagod,
buhay ma’y abuting magkalagot-lagot.
Bakit? Ano itong sakdal nang laki
na hinahandugan ng buong pag kasi
na sa lalong mahal ka pangyayari
at ginugugulan ng buhay na iwi.
Ay! Ito’y ang Inang Bayang tinubuan,
siya’y ina’t tangi na kinamulatan
ng kawili-wiling liwanag ng araw
na nagbibigay init sa lunong katawan.
Sa kanya’y utang ang unang pagtanggap
ng simoy ng hanging nagbigay lunas,
sa inis na puso na sisinghap-singhap,
sa balong malalim ng siphayo’t hirap.
Kalakip din nito’y pag-ibig sa Bayan
ang lahat ng lalong sa gunita’y mahal
mula sa masaya’t gasong kasanggulan.
hanggang sa katawan ay mapasa-libingan.
Ang nangakaraang panahon ng aliw,
ang inaasahang araw na darating
ng pagka-timawa ng mga alipin,
liban pa ba sa bayan tatanghalin?
At ang balang kahoy at ang balang sanga
na parang niya’t gubat na kaaya-aya
sukat ang makita’t sa ala-ala
ang ina’t ang giliw lampas sa saya.
Tubig niyang malinaw sa anaki’y bulog
bukal sa batisang nagkalat sa bundok
malambot na huni ng matuling agos
na nakaka aliw sa pusong may lungkot.
Sa aba ng abang mawalay sa Bayan!
gunita ma’y laging sakbibi ng lumbay
walang ala-ala’t inaasam-asam
kundi ang makita’ng lupang tinubuan.
Pati na’ng magdusa’t sampung kamatayan
wari ay masarap kung dahil sa Bayan
at lalong maghirap. O! himalang bagay,
lalong pag-irog pa ang sa kanya’y alay.
Kung ang bayang ito’y nasa panganib
at siya ay dapat na ipagtangkilik
ang anak, asawa, magulang, kapatid
isang tawag niya’y tatalikdang pilit.
Datapwa kung bayan ano ang bayan ng ka-Tagalogan
ay nilalapastangan at niyuyurakan
katwiran, puri niya’t kamahalan
ng sama ng lilong ibang bayan.
–Andres Bonifacio
What love is greater
What love is greater
In purity and excellence
Than the love of your homeland?
What love? Well, there is none
Even if you were to
Read and learn each and every word
Your original words, letters, and print
Are held within
Holy love is only holy
If it touches your heart,
As if the poor and lazy
Were as powerful as the rich
To be in desire of praise
Is to have honour and care
By singing, and writing,
That is where greatness is shown.
There will be no little importance
For those who have loved their city
But the evil, bloody, wealthy,
Make lifeless worth living
The mother of our birth,
The controller of our conscious,
Has given us warmth and hope
With her powerful rays
She has given us our dearest memory:
The love for our homeland.
From the warm, shadowless day
To the ugly, sorrowful night
Oh mother! Bring us back to our home!
As for the people who are separated
Are filled with ugliness and sorrow
When they are reminded of it.
But no matter the consequences,
In the name of our homeland,
The pains in our hearts are less tender
As the sacrifice to she is all well.
You, come and rise up
You humbled people
Who have received nothing but ill will
Despite your love of your homeland
You who have lost the importance
From the sugars of the tree of life
Turn around and find your way back
Away from all the burdens and hardships
And offer all your love
And until there is blood, it will be consumed;
If in defense, life is torn apart,
This is fate and true heaven
–Translated from Tagalog by Enrique Jariwala
The Motherland
What love is greater
Greater than this one?
In purity and excellence
Well, there isn’t one
Even if you were to
Cast every element of it aside
Your words, letters, and dialects
Can still be heard
Deep inside
Holy love is only holy
If it touches your heart,
As if the lazy who had become great
Were never lazy from the start
But for one to have this:
Sufficient honour and care,
One must sing and write,
And leave the blood to spare.
For the ones who loved this city
Reconstruct the importance of giving
But the evil, bloody, wealthy,
Make life less worth living
But this is the motherland,
Controller of the sun’s vibrant rays
Which give warmth to our hearts
And give birth to the next day
Oh mother, bring us back!
To the place where we belong,
When the sounds of our elder’s cries,
Were once a magnificent song
So give love back to our homeland,
As the sacrifice to her is all well.
But do so before your heart begins
To become tender and swell.
–Translated from Tagalog by Enrique Jariwala
Dialects
(An erasure of my interview with Cesar Quinto)
We have
dialects
They have their own
Dialects
But then came the Americans,
and they speak English, but again,
we still have the dialect
Her parents to her, my parents to me.
Japanese.
No English, no Spanish.
Japanese. Only Japanese
The school system was scrapped
When nobody is watching they talked in—
But when they’re outside, it’s—
But we retain this
Dialect.
They can’t really stop it
The dialect stayed with us
We have it.
Yes, we do,
Wala
In Tagalog, it means
None.
There is none.
–Enrique Jariwala
Translator’s Statement
Andres Bonifacio was a very famous founder and leader of the nationalist Katipunan society in the Philippines, a revolutionary organization made to achieve independence from Spanish rule. Born on November 30th, 1863 in Manila, Bonifacio grew up in a very poor family, and he therefore didn’t have a lot of schooling. In 1892, after becoming involved in revolutionary activity, Bonifacio founded the Katipunan in his home city at the age of 29, which grew slowly, but in 1896, it grew to 100,000 members in many places around the Philippines, such as Luzon, Panay, Mindoro, and Mindanao (Britannica). This poem, published in 1896, was dedicated to Bonifacio's homeland, and worked to encourage people to join the crusade in fighting for Philippine Independence. The poem, “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa” is a 16 stanza poem with 4 lines in each stanza. It has some slant rhymes on the second and fourth lines of each stanza. We can infer that the emotional tone of the poem is supposed to be an inspiring tone, as if the writer is giving a speech about Philippine Independence through the words of his poem. This makes sense as during this time in 1896, more than 100,00 new members of the Katipunan society had joined the fight for Philippine Independence. (Britannica) Therefore, it is clear that Bonifacio’s tone of writing in this poem was made for a larger audience such as the members of the second and fourth lines of each stanza. We can infer that the emotional tone of the poem is supposed to be an inspiring tone, as if the writer is giving a speech about Philippine Independence through the words of his poem. This makes sense as during this time in 1896, more than 100,00 new members of the Katipunan society had joined the fight for Philippine Independence. (Britannica) Therefore, it is clear that Bonifacio’s tone of writing in this poem was made for a larger audience such as the members of the Katipunan society.
Despite my high level of interest in this language, I had little to no prior knowledge of anything in Tagalog, such as the language, culture, or dialects. Since my mother was born in the U.S. on the West Coast, and my Dad was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, both had learned English as their first language, and weren’t really taught their parents’ languages as children. As for me growing up in Boston, I had gotten little to no exposure to any of my heritage languages. So when first jumping into this project, I didn’t know what to expect on coming across, but once I had found this poem written by Andres Bonifacio, I chose to do a quick search on the name and had found out he was a really important Filipino activist. This was just the start I needed to get a sense of the path back to Filipino ancestry.
In order to accurately translate this poem, I interviewed Donnel Miller-Mutia, who although he wasn’t overly fluent in Tagalog, knew enough of the basics to comprehend phrases and break them down bit by bit. We started by translating the first two stanzas, and after that, we had already found the main argument of this poem. We had learned that the register of the poem is both conversational and also motivational, almost like a speech in a respectful tone. After re-reading the first couple of stanzas, Donnel and I had made a frame of the poem that it was motivational, sentimental, and created in hopes of bringing people closer to their homeland. Bonifacio exclaims to his audience the importance of the love for one’s country, inciting them by listing off the many benefits of following in taking action. For example, the fourth line in the third stanza is describing a poor person, and saying that if they love their country, they will become “great and respected.”
When translating both my poems in a more figurative way, I wanted to focus on both being motivational and sentimental to the reader, as I had thought that focusing on these concepts would make the poem all more intriguing to the audience, which is what I believe Bonifacio had intended in his writing. In both my translations, I chose to sum up big chunks of the poem in smaller sections, by cutting down or even skipping over entirely some stanzas which I thought had served little importance to my “claim.” In doing so, I created a translation of excerpts from the original poem. In my first interpretive translation, I wanted to focus on the author’s touch of repeating phrases such as, “the love of your homeland,” and “offer all your love” in order to signify the themes of the poem. I also chose to use the “you” form in both of my translations in order to give the likeness of someone giving a speech to a large group of people. My second translation was inspired by the slanted rhymes at the end of the second and fourth lines on each stanza. In this translation excerpt, I experimented with using many rhythmic schemes in the same pattern as the original poem, but adding more definition and variety to my rhymes in order to make the poem more inciting and additionally more playful.
One challenge I faced was the use of pronouns in my poem. Deciding whether or not to refer to the god/dess of the sea as a man or a woman had seemed like an easy task, but in reality, had a significant impact on how the poem was to be interpreted. Along with being included in Bonifacio’s poem, gods and leaders had seemed to play a major role in Filipino culture. Donnel had stated that Filipinos had most commonly referred to the sea as well as many other forms of nature as a female, hence describing the land as “mother earth,” the creator. However, the google translate version had described the land as a male character, which had seemed to be what Bonifacio had written in his poem. Although there wasn’t a true connection to Google Translate having the same or a similar definition to what Bonifacio had intended in his writing, my translation mentor was the one who had told me about the importance of female gods in the Philippines, and in the end, I had chosen to describe the sea as a female and therefore, embodying the Filipino culture of describing living nature as goddesses.
My beliefs about what makes a “good” translation have definitely changed. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Languages as Bridges argues that, “It's the language that resonates well with my thoughts, beliefs, and culture. It's what identifies me.” This quote specifically resonated with how I portrayed a “good” translation, as I had realized the importance of having one’s voice in their own language over being taken away in a different one. When first being introduced to this project, I had the belief that “as a translator, their main focus is to stay as close to the original version, word for word, as possible.” It had seemed obvious to me that this was true, and I initially made it my goal to follow in this belief while I was creating my translation excerpts. However, I realize now that. What I can take away from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s writing is that certain words in other languages, such as Tagalog, are distinct from any other language, and therefore, are unable to be translated. At least not to their fullest capability, because if one was to try to translate these certain words, they would ultimately be inaccurate and would not truly line up with the author’s meaning of the piece.
For my erasure poem, I chose to interview my grandmother’s younger brother, the two of them being born on the Coast of Pangasinan. I felt comfortable talking with him, and he seemed to feel comfortable opening up to me too, as he talked about what he had experienced in the Philippines in the 1940s. He talked about his experiences with the Japanese coming to the Philippines to harvest resources from the land during World War 2, and how their language had “completely scrapped the school system.” Everyone, he said, had learned to speak the basics of Japanese, and sometimes kids were even punished for speaking their native language out of the house. I was really intrigued on hearing this person’s side of the story, as it had brought many questions into my head, such as, “did families (including yourself) resist Japanese colonialism of the land or language in the Philippines? If so, how?” I had quickly found out, after he told me that all the native speakers had still chosen to speak their languages primarily in their homes, even after the languages were frowned upon by the Japanese jurisdiction. However, this form of resistance had changed Japan’s course significantly, he states, as the Japanese had quickly realized that there was no way they were able to stop the Filipinos from speaking their languages, and chose to ignore the Filipinos instead.
Having heard of my Lolo’s experiences with Japanese colonialism, I was very intrigued and felt it necessary to incorporate it into my poem in some way. I chose to first pick a few important lines from my interview that I wanted to incorporate into my poem, and then narrow them down to the most important ones from there. Some of my favorites were, “her parents to her, my parents to me” and “They can’t really stop it.” This second phrase especially had stuck with me for the entirety of the interview, since I felt as if there was so much to build off of just from that line. I experimented with different ways I can incorporate phrases into my poem that build off of this phrase. For instance, I chose the phrase, “The dialect stayed with us” after the phrase in order to confirm that it was the dialect that he (my Lolo) was referring to. In the end, my poem is free-flowing, with no specific typographical choices. Since I found that the word “dialect” was repeated many times in my interview, I wanted to design my poem surrounded by the idea of dialects. I separated parts of a sentence into different lines, even to just one word a line, because I thought it invoked a pause mid-sentence when a person was reading it. During my interview, I also found out that the word, “wala” in Pangasinan had a similar but completely opposite meaning to what it had meant in Tagalog. In Pangasinan, the word means, “yes,” but just a little bit down South of the Philippines, where Tagalog is the most spoken language, it means, “no.”I wanted to incorporate these two meanings of the same word into my poem but instead of demonstrating the difference between two languages, it describes how different dialects portray colonialism and resistance. I used the phrase, “Wala / In tagalog, it means / None. / There is none.”
Works Cited
Britannica. “Andres Bonifacio | Filipino Political Leader | Britannica.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Andres-Bonifacio.
wa Thiong'o, Ngugi, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo. The Language of Languages. Seagull Books, 2023. Accessed 6 June 2025.
Bonifacio, Andres. “Pag-Ibig Sa Tinubuang Lupa.” Scribd, 2025, www.scribd.com/document/432502970/Pag-ibig-Sa-Tinubuang-Lupa. Accessed 3 June 2025.
---. “Philippine Revolution.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 16 May 2025, www.britannica.com/event/Philippine-Revolution.
Smyth, David. “The Canon in Southeast Asian Literature.” Google Books, 2025, books.google.com/books?id=2UBFAQAAQBAJ&dq=pag-ibig+sa+tinubuang+lupa&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q=pag-ibig%20sa%20 tinubuang%20 lupa &f=false. Accessed 3 June 2025.
