Six PM

In this poem, he hides deceptively a simple thought and idea under a web of wordplay. The poem is, simply put, about the double lives everyone seem to has in the fast-paced modern society. He is alluding to his own double life; he is a grammarian (another term for linguist) during the day, and at night a trouvere, which is a French term for a poet-composer, similar to a troubadour. He laments how dour his daytime life is, and looks forward to the afternoon (the titular 6 P.M.) so that he may, at least until the next morning, live like a troubadour. The wordplay might seem to hide layers of meaning, but it’s all just about Nick Joaquin’s own double life; as the last line aptly puts it: “conquistador tonight, clockpuncher tomorrow.”

Six PM 
Trouvere at night, grammarian in the morning,
ruefully architecting syllables--
but in the afternoon my ivory tower falls.
I take a place in the bus among people returning
to love (domesticated) and the smell of onions burning
and women reaping the washlines as the Angelus tolls.

But I-- where am I bound?

   My garden, my four walls
and you project strange shores upon my yearning:
Atlantis? the Caribbeans? Or Cathay?
Conductor, do I get off at Sinai?
Apocalypse awaits me: urgent my sorrow
towards the undiscovered world that I
from warm responding flesh for a while shall borrow:
conquistador tonight, clockouncher tomorrow.(1937)

sources: http://guialimbaga.weebly.com/nick-joaquin1.html

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