Terra

Dad was a rural development expert. He was professor of public administration at the University of the Philippines, college dean before he resigned in 1989. He coordinated research and training in rural development while at the Asian and Pacific Development Centre (APDC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 1978 to 1981. He also produced journal articles, book chapters and edited volumes on topics like the management, financing and stakeholder mobilization for rural development. Today would have been his 89th birthday. Here are is a triptych of poems he wrote: "rural development?" (no date); "untitled" (1979) and "the flight" (1985). Each poem distills anger at death and barrenness in the fields, fecundity sacrificed on the altar of modernity.