AS in the poems of the German writer Bertolt Brecht, have you ever wondered about the people who produce your food, build your house, make your shoes and other items essential for your daily living? "Song of the Metal" by Marra PL. Lanot is a poem that gives us a glimpse into one such ordinary life.

"Blacksmith,/Tear off the darkness of the cave/From where I came, the rust/I gathered in the earth's womb./ Blacksmith,/Shape me into form: knife,/Spade, plow, rake, saw.../Chase away the emptiness of sleep./ Blacksmith,/Mold me into meaning so I may serve/You like the horse and the carabao./Hammer me into the dreams of your people."

This short poem suggests a lot about the significance and utility of simple things. The Roman poet, Horace, lived in the 1st century BC during the reign of Augustus Caesar. He made the well-known definition of the two functions of poetry: dulce et utile, "to delight and to instruct." The poet and critic Matthew Arnold translated this into "sweetness and light," or poetry that provides entertainment and serves a social function as well.

These roles of poetry were clarified in the book of Horace, "Ars Poetica" (Art of Poetry), from which we quote the following passages: "The aim of poets is either to be beneficial or to delight, or in their phrases to combine charm and high applicability to life ... Whatever you invent for the sake of pleasing, let it not be for the sake of pleasing, let it not be too distant from the truth ... By at once delighting and teaching the reader, the poet who mixes the sweet with the useful has everybody's approval."

The function utile means that poetry should be useful. It can be used to raise a people's consciousness about an issue, or lead them to a particular course of action.

Thus, it is poetry that aims to serve social or even political ends. The poetry of Mao Zedong of China and Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam belong to this category as well. Both were visionary leaders of their countries and excellent poets as well, who harnessed the power of words to raise their people's awareness about political issues relevant to their respective countries.

Much later after Horace, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley would also write "A Defense of Poetry" in 1821. Shelley also talked about the twin functions of poetry that were defined by the classical Greeks and made popular by Horace. Shelley used the words "wisdom" and "pleasure" as the twin poles from which poetry swings. Another pair of words he used was "reason" and "imagination."

The following excerpts from "A Defense of Poetry," written at a time when the value of poetry was being besieged, define the nature and function of poetry.

"... Poets are not only the authors of language and music, of the dance, of architecture, and statuary and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers ...

"Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body in the spirit, as the shadow to the substance ... Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls, open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with delight ... Poets are the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present ... Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

These are big and important words, but the context for this was the peak of the Industrial Revolution in England when utility was favored over beauty, function over aesthetics (concept of beauty). Shelley, the Romantic Movement poet that he was, had no recourse but to trumpet the importance of poetry in noble and lofty terms that, to our skeptical 21st-century mind, seems a bit excessive. But please remember that every word the poets uttered was a product of his or her time, shaped by upbringing and circumstance, solidified by the time and tide of history.

More appropriate I think is Ezra Pound's assertion that "poets are the antennae of the race." Possessed of extraordinary powers of perception and intuition, poets can see parallels between nature and idea, between objects and insights. The poem as writ, more so if socially engaged or social realist, could help raise the consciousness of people about a social advocacy or issue.

In the case of this poem, "The Song of the Metal," the persona or the speaker of the poem is the iron ore in the "womb of the earth." This iron ore is the raw material that can be transformed into something useful for the people. This persona is then asking the blacksmith to turn her into something that can help the people in their daily and important tasks, the way the horse and the carabao help people with their livelihood. In the end, the poem is telling us that our lives should be one with the "dreams of the people."

The arc of the poem's narrative, then, is from solitude to solidarity.

Personification is a figure of speech that gives human qualities to inanimate objects or to abstractions. In this poem, the iron ore speaks like a person, telling us of its importance and purpose in the world.

Confucius in his "Analects" said that the good life is the public life — a life lived to promote the welfare of the community, and by extension, the country. This poem mirrors such an aspiration as found in this line when the persona said: "Mold me into meaning."

We will spend our whole lives trying to mold ourselves into that meaning that is ours all along, not the meaning or the misdirected dream that other people had forced upon us.

Marra PL. Lanot identified herself with the feminist movement, a group of women writers that questioned the patriarchy (dominant roles of men) in all aspects of Philippine life. Her fellow poet and feminist, Grace Monte de Ramos, yokes together feminism and a biting commentary on macho-instigated violence in Philippine society in the poem, "Brave Woman."

This poem has been taught in many teachers' workshops held all over the country before the People Power Revolution of 1986 and in its own way has helped shape the consciousness of generations of Filipino readers.

Note the painful story, or layers of stories, contained in the poem. Look at the story that lies at the core of this poem — that nothing seems to change in Philippine society. The poem was written 33 years ago, but why do the realities it depicts still happen at present? What causes violence? What is the root cause of poverty? Is it God-given or caused by the unjust structures that people have built through the centuries?

What are the simple but effective images used in this poem? These thoughts will give you food for thought, something to chew on, while listening to the song of the lines and the glide of the words.

Many poems were written about the People Power Revolution from February 23–26, 1986 when an irate people kicked out the dictator Ferdinand Edralin Marcos from the presidential palace in Malacañang. Simeon Dumdum Jr. crafted a lyrical and powerful poem called "February" fittingly written in 1986.

The people's collective action is this fresh breath now blowing upon the land, and its name is freedom.