Letter of a poet to his nieces abroad*

You’re still young
wetter yet in bed
thoughts on games
and sweet candy

If you’ve grown up
read this please
hoping that you understand
Lakin Anoy’s speech

If not, it’s necessary
to translate it in English
Shakespeare’s tongue
the dominant voice there

You’re growing up
in a borrowed idiom
in tales and stories
whose heroes are strangers

Their nose not flat
white skinned
like sugar
hair that is blonde

Unlike Siogen
a legendary hunter
cooked in the sun
bathed in sea salt

And Apo Anno
named for a river
a mighty warrior
forest his playground

Ancestors they were
of the race you came from
blood flowing in your veins
had lived once in their hearts

Learn Pangasinan
sigh of your souls
its echo I could still hear
over mountains and fields

Whisper, laughter, shouts of yore
flown and kept by the wind
so that Caboloan’s progeny
could listen to Apolaki

Know, dig up your roots
you’ll stand up secure
do not emulate others
who had forgotten their baley.

* This is the translation of a Pangasinan poem published last month with the title “Sulat na umaanlong ed saray kaanakan to’d biektaew.”