Edith L. Tiempo was a Filipino English En glish language writer, a poet, teacher and literary critic. In 1999, she was conferred the National Artist Award for Literature. The Return is one of her man y poems.
If the dead years could years could shake their skinny legs and run (symbolism: dead years-old age) As once he had circled this house in thirty counts, He would go thru this door among these old friends and they would not shun Him and the tales he would tell, tales that would bear more than the spare Testimony of willed wit and his grey hairs (symbolism, grey hair-old age) He would enter among them, the fatted meat about his mouth, As he told of how he had lived on strange boats on o n strange waters Of strategems with lean sly winds, Of the times death went coughing like a sick man on the motors, (simile, death compared to a sick man) Their breaths would rise hot and pungent as the lemon rinds (simile, breaths compared to lemon rinds) In their cups and sniff at the odors o dors Of his past like dogs at dried bones behind a hedge, (simile, past is compared to dogs…) And he would live in the whispers and locked heads. Wheeling around and around and turning back was where he started: The turn to the pasture, a swift streak under a boy's running; The swing, up a few times and he had all the earth he wanted; The tower trees, and not so tall as he had imagined; The rocking chair on the porch, you pushed it and it started rocking, Rocking, and abrubtly stopped. (imagery-memory of youth stopped abruptly by time) He, too, stopped in the doorway, chagrined. He would go among them but he would not tell, he could be smart, He, an old man cracking bones of his embarrassment apart.
The Return speaks about how an old man, a traveler, as he goes through his last years. It discusses the hardships of being at an old age, and reminiscing the life the old man once lived. ‘Dead years’ represent the grueling life he now has, and the sorrow he is feeling at the moment. In the first few lines, he wants to go to his friends to talk about the life he has lived, but his body could not bear no more, and he has become a stranger to his friends because of his travels. In his youth, he had traveled a lot, and thus this made him very famous to his friends back then. In his old age, all he sees are the things that old men acquaints themselves into: rocking chair, pasture, tower trees, etc. But he was not at all happy about those things, because of isolation, as evident in the line ‘He, too, stopped in the doorway, chagrined’ after recounting the memory of a boy hurling back and forth to the house. And he would not want to share this feeling of sadness anyone, because ‘he could be smart’, and this deep feeling of solitariness embraces him all the time. (eto po yung gawa ko. Yung sumunod copy paste lang. haha) Basically, The Return reflects on the individual reminiscing every moment of being a youth and describes how he cherish every moment of his life. The poem stresses the importance of cherishing every moment and every breath a person takes in life.
