To the Man I Married Angela Manalang-Gloria You are my earth and all the 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, You are the final, elemented 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 Helicon 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!

The Spouse Luis Dato Rose in her hand, and moist eyes young with weeping, She stands upon the threshold of her house, Fragrant with scent that wakens love from sleeping, She looks far down to where her husband plows. Her hair dishevelled in the night of passion, Her warm limbs humid with the sacred strife, What may she know but man and woman fashion Out of the clay of wrath and sorrowLife? She holds no joys beyond the days tomorrow, She finds no worlds beyond her loves embrace; She looks upon the Form behind the furrow, Who is her Mind, her Motion, Time and Space. O somber mystery of eyes unspeaking, O dark enigma of Lifes love forlorn; The Sphinx beside the river smiles with seeking The secret answer since the world was born.