In the infancy of my verse, when it was but toddling, struggling on its feet, From my heart and pen flowed forth the ink of blood-about rain. Rain like tears; rain like the twine of kites; rain like prison bars; Rain like the mosquito net, rain like spears, needles and threads, rain like growth of grass; Rain like grain; rain like the strings of a thousand guitars; rain, rain, rain. And like what a poet-friend said, the rain will never disappear From our poetry. Because it is forever raining on these our islands.   II   Rain is good for the rice in the plain but not the corn in the highlands. But the enemy is daunted by the climb into our fastnesses when the rain is heavy. And we have to mind the slippery stones in the streams, bridge of coconut trunk; Mud, most specially, at the climb; the leak in the thatching. And the cold, the cold, but we're only the people's army smiling in our song, Because we are the eye of the typhoon, full of light of the great Revolution: And after- the rainbow; the breath of fresh wind, and cries of Long live! Long live!