Landscape Without Figures

In this poem, Nick Joaquin seems to be talking about the emotions one may have felt and thoughts that one might have had in his mind during the Cold War. He speaks of a steady trend of going underground (“all transferred underground to file the age of airlines and airwaves among Neolithic caves,” and “the trend being steadily underground”), a “Hegira” of sorts (an Arabic word for “flight” or “migration”) for the rest of mankind; this seems to be how he views the steady creation of bomb shelters and other underground facilities. The poet also alludes to the constant debates (possibly the SALT treaties of that time) of diplomats (US and Russian, most likely), and how the fears of the people, instead of making the de-escalate, fueled the creation of more powerful nuclear arms, and how this constant development caused fueled the aforementioned Hegira (“fear prepares more and more fiery explosions to illuminate mankind’s eventual Hegira”). He mocks how man, by his own fault, is driving himself underground, in very much the same manner as mice and mole do (“man may outmimic mouse and mole”). He then proceeds to mock how man, who once flew like an angel, is steadily becoming like an earthworm, looking for sanctuary deep beneath the surface. Ultimately, one can conclude that Landscape Without Figures is a political poem, highlighting all the fears and excesses of the Cold War.

Landscape Without Figures

How looms the landscape of the future
where even man will be vile:
big shot and small fry, straw man, moocher--
all transferred underground to file
the Age of Airline and Airwaves
among the neolithic caves.


The trend being steadily underground
(bomb-shelter, catacomb, foxhole
and fathomings ever more profound),
man may outmimic mouse and mole
and find his live limbs eagerly
intruding on Persephone.

The quodams angels of the air
turned earthworms anguishing to locate
  some hollow at the globe's core where
the flag poles do not penetrate,
will bless the Devil for a berth
within the bowels of the earth.

The Future's rapping at the door
and rattling the venetian blind
while flat upon the bathroom floor
the Grass of Fashion fumes to find
she can no longer, like the starfish,
survive upon the glittering surface.

As diplomats debate, debate,
and fear prepares more and more fiery
explosions to illuminate
mankind's eventual hegira,
your sad eyes, staring, make this room
the memory's viaticum.

A stone heart's in the stricken flesh
that craves a miner's axes-- unless
Christ, with his customary stealth,
comes cleaving through the heart's  material
the twin caves of his birth and burial.

(1950)

sources: http://chrsdvdlao.weebly.com/1/post/2011/7/nick-joaquin.html

guialimbaga.weebly.com/nick-joaquin1.html