MAN OF EARTH
Pliant is the bamboo;
I am man of earth;
They say that from the bamboo
We had our first birth.

Am I of the body,
Or of the green leaf?
Do I have to whisper
My every sin and grief?

If the wind passes by,
Must I stoop and try
To measure fully
My flexibility?

I might have been the bamboo,
But I will be a man.
Bend me then, O Lord,
Bend me if you can.

(1932)

First impression: On my first reading, I had the impression that the speaker in the poem totally submits to the folk legend of Malakas and Maganda coming out whole from a bamboo afloat at sea and pecked open by a huge bird, as our possible origin of life. And because of that, the speaker is convinces us that we should emulate the flexibility and resilience of the bamboo that gave birth to our race no matter what tragedies may come our way. God is with us anyway.

But after several thinking and re-thinking of the poem’s point, I’ve got second thoughts.

I remember Prof. de Veyra telling us of “unpacking the ideas in the poem by looking at its details and images as closely as possible.” True.

Now, I speculate. What does these first two lines in the opening stanza: “Pliant is the bamboo;/ I am man of earth;/” really suggest? How about lines 5-6: “Am I of the body,/Or of the green leaf?/” And what does the really saying in the last stanza when he writes, “I might have been the bamboo,/ But I will be a man./ Bend me then, O Lord,/ Bend me if you can.//” Is the speaker challenging an established notion (or unconsciously accepted notion) of something? Is he really protesting of something that was already there but shouldn’t really be there in the first place? It’s getting really abstract now. But the thing here is, the lines gives us a hint of something hidden. The challenge is to look at it closely by examining its possible point or significance.

Pliant