Literary Piece #1

To the Man I Married Angela Manalang Gloria
I You are my earth and all that earth implies: The gravity that ballasts me in space, The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries For food and shelter against devouring days. You are the earth whose orbit marks my way And sets my north and south, my east and west, Your are the final, elemental clay The driven heart must turn to for its rest. If in your arms that hold me now so near I lift my keening thoughts to another one, As trees long rooted to the earth uprear Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun, You who are earth, O never doubt that I Need you no less because I need the sky! II I can not love you with a love That outcompares the boundless sea, For that were false, as no such love And no such ocean can ever be. But I can love you with a love As finite as the wave that dies And dying holds from crest to crest The blue of everlasting skies.

In this poem, a woman metaphorically compares her husband to the earth. She considers the man she married as the “earth” that nourishes her and. Her husband provides her all her needs. Her husband gives her all the means to live. In the poem, she claims that the man she married is the reason why she survives. He is also a sure shelter to protect her from harm. He is the direction of her life. He is also the one whom she wants to be with until her life is gone. With much acknowledgement to her love for her husband, she also mentions of “another one” to whom she “lifts her keening thoughts”. She compares this “another one” to the “sky”. I believe that the woman recognizes her Creator. This doesn’t mean that she loves her husband less. But she compares this to the fact that like the trees need the earth where it is rooted, it also needs the sky. She does not want to compare her love for her husband to the ocean. Her love for him may be great, yet nobody deserves much love than the Almighty. At the same time, nobody can give the love as wide as the ocean except Him. Instead, she compares her love for her husband to the “wave”. She is telling that human love dies. It will end when our stay here on earth also ends. The last line of the poem is very meaningful. She affirms her belief that dying is the only way in order for us to experience “eternal life”.