a poem by Roger B. Rueda
There are no tyrants
where there are no slaves, Rizal wrote—
on a day perhaps not unlike this:
the afternoon light
caught in the blue necks of beer bottles,
the plaza emptied of children,
the sky taut
like the skin of a drum before mourning.
It is Good Friday.
The radio hushes between pasyon chants.
A fly paces the rim
of the vinegar bowl on the kitchen table.
Somewhere in Quiapo, a procession slows,
the crowd thinned by sun and fatigue,
barefoot men dragging
crosses carved from driftwood
and second-hand nails.
Christ does not speak.
He has said everything
with his body:
open hands,
a ribcage like a broken balustrade,
a face leaning forward
as if listening
to the ache of the world.
Rizal, in a cell whose walls
sweat limestone and dusk,
understood this:
that power does not fall
unless something
refuses to kneel.
That empires are built
not only by guns
but by people
learning to keep quiet
at mealtime.
In El Filibusterismo,
Simoun dies in the house of a priest,
his gold unspent,
his vengeance unfinished.
No earthquakes split the sky.
No angels arrive with fire.
Only silence,
and the heavy breathing
of the old man
who will bury him.
This too is Calvary.
Not just the hill,
but every street
where mercy looks like weakness,
and every prayer
offered to survive
instead of to change.
“There are no tyrants
where there are no slaves.”
What Rizal meant
was that tyranny
does not always wear a sword—
sometimes it smiles
through clean uniforms,
asks for your name,
hands you change
with exact fingers.
Christ did not die
because it was holy.
He died
because the world hated
anything
it could not bribe.
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