Summary of the march of death by bienvenido Santos?

Answer 1

The March of Death By Bienvenido N. Santos

Were you one of them, my brother

Whom they marched under the April sun

And flogged to bleeding along the roads we knew and loved?

March, my brother, march!

The springs are clear beyond the road

There is rest at the foot of the hill.

We were young together,

So very young and unafraid;

Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun,

Brown pools and mud in the December rains;

We ran barefoot along the beaten tracks in the canefields

Planted corn after the harvest months.

Here, too, we fought and loved

Shared our dreams of a better place

Beyond those winding trails.

March, my brother march!

The springs are clear beyond the road

There is rest at the foot of the hill.

We knew those roads by heart

Told places in the dark

By the fragrance of garden hedge

In front of uncle's house;

The clatter of wooden shoes on the bamboo bridge,

The peculiar rustling of bamboo groves

Beside the house where Celia lived.

Did you look through the blood in your eyes

For Celia sitting by the window,

As thousands upon thousands of you

Walked and died on the burning road?

If you died among the hundreds by the roadside

It should have been by the bamboo groves

With the peculiar rustling in the midnight.

No, you have not died; you cannot die;

I have felt your prayer touch my heart

As I walked along the crowded streets of America.

And we would walk those roads again one April morn,

Listen to the sound of working men

Dragging tree trunks from the forests,

Rebuilding homes- laughing again-

Sowing the field with grain, fearless of death

From cloudless skies.

You would be silent, remembering

The many young bodies that lay mangled by the roadside;

The agony and the moaning and the silent tears,

The grin of yellow men, their bloodstained blades opaque in the sun;

I would be silent, too, having nothing to say.

What matters if the winters were bitter cold

And loneliness stalked my footsteps on the snow?

March, my brother, march!

The springs are clear beyond the road

Rest, at the foot of the hill.

And we would walk those roads again on April morn

Hand in hand like pilgrims marching

Towards the church on the hillside,

Only a little nipa house beside the bamboo groves

With the peculiar rustling in the midnight

Or maybe I would walk them yet,

Remembering... remembering

Answer 2

It's about the Death March in Bataan, a torturous series of POW executions in the Philippines during WWII.

Several theories are:

• The author is writing a requiem to his friend who died in the Death March.
• The poem is a tribute to those who have died, but not in vain, in the Death March.

Speaker is a Filipino who immigrated to the US before WWII.