There is a curious paradox which no one can explain. Who can explain the secret of the reaping of the grain? Who can explain spring after winter's laboring pain? Or why must we all die in order to grow again?
In "Thanatophsis" of William Cullen Bryant are these words; "So leave that when the summons come to join, the innumerable caravan which moves to that chambered realm where each shall take, his place in the silence hall of death."
So great a man has left this world to joint God’s kingdom.
It is with a feeling of trepidation that i pay tribute to a great and outstanding Aklanon:
I first read the name of Professor Dominador I. Ilio in studies of high school literature, specifically in the Philippine Prose and Poetry where his literary works and poetry rank with literary greats like NVM Gonzales, and others. Much later, I would read his poetry in the 1946 book titled “The Guerilla Flowers” a book of poems of the guerillas of World War II in Panay together with Aklanon guerilla poets like Beato A. dela Cruz, Roman A. dela Cruz, Jose J. Parco and Leopoldo A. dela Cruz.
Actually, “The Guerilla Flowers” is a collection of poems written by soldiers of the Panay Guerilla Unit under the command of General Macario Peralta. I remember that professor Ilio’s poems: Camp Agsasaging and SInaeangan were anthologized by Manuel E. Buenafe in The Voice of the Veteran. Camp Agsasaging is included in Philippine Prose and Poetry Volume III, and in Gems in English and American Literature, an anthology by Mercado, Sanchez, et. al.
Permit me, to quote, what was written about Professor Dominador I. Ilio in the book titled “An Oral History of the Second Generation of Writers in English” written in 1987 by Edilberto Alegre and Doreen Fernandez, thus:”He is a rare combination - an engineer, specifically a teacher of hydraulics for decades, and a poet. Even to Dominador Ilio himself the two abilities are separate, unrelated. His hobby is the key, perhaps. Even now he has a passion for bridge. Given a specific number of objects and a set of rules, the fun and challenge rest in the permutations and combinations – in anticipating them, in predicting them, and when one is the player, in bringing them about.
“No wonder he writes of Percival in Times Square of St. John in Chicago, of Icarus in catechism class. No wonder too that his favorite Filipino poet is Jimmy Abad. He has completed 250 pages of the story of pre-barter of Panay in verse. Like his famous poems, this is a juxtaposition of legend, geography and imagination. Physiographical is what he calls the description of setting. Surely it would be layers upon layers of historical and geologic times. Between the layers would be spaces for peoples and events imagined and real.”
“The formation of the poet of Ilio must be set in the education system of his time, the public school educational system specifically, which furnished the opportunities for a quick mind like his. One recalls T.D. Agcaoili, Sinai Hamada, and Manuel Viray. The educational system provided the channel through which they could move from periphery to the center. And the center was the University of the Philippines. The trip from Malinao, Aklan, to the UP at Padre Faura followed the pattern of a centralized structure of power.”
“The next step was to go to the US. Although Professor Ilio avers that, in his case, engineering and poetry do mot mix, he did get an M.S. in Engineering from the University of Iowa, and at the same time most advanced training in the writing of poetry in the Creative Writing Workshop of the same university. If the two indeed did not mix, they took place in the same place at the same time.”
“The names of publication venues attest to the encouragement given by media to new and established writers in English: Graphic, Sunday Tribune, Saturday Evening News, UP’s Philippine Collegian, and the UP Writers’ Club Annual Literary, Apprentice. Then there were the public high school libraries and the National Library, whose lending facilities fed the minds of all writers of this generation. The national weeklies paid contributors of poetry and fiction. No wonder then that Ilio developed a lifelong fascination for reading and writing. Capturing Philippine experience in English was natural assumption, as writing of Icarus, Percival, and St. John was to become a natural extension.”
“Professor Ilio is quiet and withdrawn, but he has always had friends who believed in his writing – Abelardo Subido, Manuel Viray, Sinai Hamada. Katoks Tayag, NVM Gonzales, and later in Iowa, American friends in the College of Engineering, and lastly in the UP, the Beta Epsilon fraternity of the College of Engineering. A small coterie, but a faithful one.”
“Now that he is retired, he has more time for writing and for bridge. He has focused his mind on pre-barter Panay – a return to his past, a recapturing of the stories he heard when he was a child, a forgoing of reality which is a product of locale, milieu, and creative powers.”
“Rabindranath Tagore once said that death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting away the lamp because the dawn has come.”
I remember that Ash Wednesday reminder of death when the priest says, “Memento homo, quiae pulvis est et in pulverem reverteris.” “Remember man, that dust thou art and to dust you shall return.”
Death, is said, is the liberator of him, whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure; the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
Daniel Webster, the great American orator and statesman state: “One may live as a conqueror, a king or a magistrate but he must die as a man. The bed o death brings every human being to his pure individuality to the intense contemplation of that deepest and most solemn of all relations - - the relation between the creature and his Creator.”
Death is the crown of life. Where death denied the poor man would live in vain; to live would not be life; even fools would wish to die.
We seem to have an erroneous concept of death. We picture death as coming to destroy, let us rather picture Christ as coming to save. We think of death as ending; let us rather think of life as beginning and that more abundantly. We think of losing; let us think of gaining. We think of parting, let us think of meeting. We think of going away; let us think of arriving. And as the voice of death whispers “You must go from earth.” let us here the voice of Christ saying: “You are but coming to me.”
Professor Dominador I. Ilio, a literary genius, is gone – from earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope, of the resurrection.
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity. So it is for Professor Dominador I. Ilio who now rest in the loving bosom of his Creator.
To Professor Dominador I. Ilio’s dearest ones, to his beloved Clotilde who he shall now join in God’s kingdom, to his children, Mayor Dominador Y. Ilio, Jr., Engr. Dennis Y. Ilio, Dr. Kenneth Y. Ilio; to his daughter-in-law, Fatima Amie; his grandchildren, Christian, Lara, Lani, Lisa and Jon Dominador and to his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, friends and relatives, I extend our deepest deepest sympathy and condolence, and this prayer:
“Now the laborer’s task is o’er
Now that the battle day is past;
Now upon the fathers shore
Lands the voyager at last,
Father in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant”
In "Thanatophsis" of William Cullen Bryant are these words; "So leave that when the summons come to join, the innumerable caravan which moves to that chambered realm where each shall take, his place in the silence hall of death."
So great a man has left this world to joint God’s kingdom.
It is with a feeling of trepidation that i pay tribute to a great and outstanding Aklanon:
I first read the name of Professor Dominador I. Ilio in studies of high school literature, specifically in the Philippine Prose and Poetry where his literary works and poetry rank with literary greats like NVM Gonzales, and others. Much later, I would read his poetry in the 1946 book titled “The Guerilla Flowers” a book of poems of the guerillas of World War II in Panay together with Aklanon guerilla poets like Beato A. dela Cruz, Roman A. dela Cruz, Jose J. Parco and Leopoldo A. dela Cruz.
Actually, “The Guerilla Flowers” is a collection of poems written by soldiers of the Panay Guerilla Unit under the command of General Macario Peralta. I remember that professor Ilio’s poems: Camp Agsasaging and SInaeangan were anthologized by Manuel E. Buenafe in The Voice of the Veteran. Camp Agsasaging is included in Philippine Prose and Poetry Volume III, and in Gems in English and American Literature, an anthology by Mercado, Sanchez, et. al.
Permit me, to quote, what was written about Professor Dominador I. Ilio in the book titled “An Oral History of the Second Generation of Writers in English” written in 1987 by Edilberto Alegre and Doreen Fernandez, thus:”He is a rare combination - an engineer, specifically a teacher of hydraulics for decades, and a poet. Even to Dominador Ilio himself the two abilities are separate, unrelated. His hobby is the key, perhaps. Even now he has a passion for bridge. Given a specific number of objects and a set of rules, the fun and challenge rest in the permutations and combinations – in anticipating them, in predicting them, and when one is the player, in bringing them about.
“No wonder he writes of Percival in Times Square of St. John in Chicago, of Icarus in catechism class. No wonder too that his favorite Filipino poet is Jimmy Abad. He has completed 250 pages of the story of pre-barter of Panay in verse. Like his famous poems, this is a juxtaposition of legend, geography and imagination. Physiographical is what he calls the description of setting. Surely it would be layers upon layers of historical and geologic times. Between the layers would be spaces for peoples and events imagined and real.”
“The formation of the poet of Ilio must be set in the education system of his time, the public school educational system specifically, which furnished the opportunities for a quick mind like his. One recalls T.D. Agcaoili, Sinai Hamada, and Manuel Viray. The educational system provided the channel through which they could move from periphery to the center. And the center was the University of the Philippines. The trip from Malinao, Aklan, to the UP at Padre Faura followed the pattern of a centralized structure of power.”
“The next step was to go to the US. Although Professor Ilio avers that, in his case, engineering and poetry do mot mix, he did get an M.S. in Engineering from the University of Iowa, and at the same time most advanced training in the writing of poetry in the Creative Writing Workshop of the same university. If the two indeed did not mix, they took place in the same place at the same time.”
“The names of publication venues attest to the encouragement given by media to new and established writers in English: Graphic, Sunday Tribune, Saturday Evening News, UP’s Philippine Collegian, and the UP Writers’ Club Annual Literary, Apprentice. Then there were the public high school libraries and the National Library, whose lending facilities fed the minds of all writers of this generation. The national weeklies paid contributors of poetry and fiction. No wonder then that Ilio developed a lifelong fascination for reading and writing. Capturing Philippine experience in English was natural assumption, as writing of Icarus, Percival, and St. John was to become a natural extension.”
“Professor Ilio is quiet and withdrawn, but he has always had friends who believed in his writing – Abelardo Subido, Manuel Viray, Sinai Hamada. Katoks Tayag, NVM Gonzales, and later in Iowa, American friends in the College of Engineering, and lastly in the UP, the Beta Epsilon fraternity of the College of Engineering. A small coterie, but a faithful one.”
“Now that he is retired, he has more time for writing and for bridge. He has focused his mind on pre-barter Panay – a return to his past, a recapturing of the stories he heard when he was a child, a forgoing of reality which is a product of locale, milieu, and creative powers.”
“Rabindranath Tagore once said that death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting away the lamp because the dawn has come.”
I remember that Ash Wednesday reminder of death when the priest says, “Memento homo, quiae pulvis est et in pulverem reverteris.” “Remember man, that dust thou art and to dust you shall return.”
Death, is said, is the liberator of him, whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure; the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
Daniel Webster, the great American orator and statesman state: “One may live as a conqueror, a king or a magistrate but he must die as a man. The bed o death brings every human being to his pure individuality to the intense contemplation of that deepest and most solemn of all relations - - the relation between the creature and his Creator.”
Death is the crown of life. Where death denied the poor man would live in vain; to live would not be life; even fools would wish to die.
We seem to have an erroneous concept of death. We picture death as coming to destroy, let us rather picture Christ as coming to save. We think of death as ending; let us rather think of life as beginning and that more abundantly. We think of losing; let us think of gaining. We think of parting, let us think of meeting. We think of going away; let us think of arriving. And as the voice of death whispers “You must go from earth.” let us here the voice of Christ saying: “You are but coming to me.”
Professor Dominador I. Ilio, a literary genius, is gone – from earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope, of the resurrection.
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity. So it is for Professor Dominador I. Ilio who now rest in the loving bosom of his Creator.
To Professor Dominador I. Ilio’s dearest ones, to his beloved Clotilde who he shall now join in God’s kingdom, to his children, Mayor Dominador Y. Ilio, Jr., Engr. Dennis Y. Ilio, Dr. Kenneth Y. Ilio; to his daughter-in-law, Fatima Amie; his grandchildren, Christian, Lara, Lani, Lisa and Jon Dominador and to his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, friends and relatives, I extend our deepest deepest sympathy and condolence, and this prayer:
“Now the laborer’s task is o’er
Now that the battle day is past;
Now upon the fathers shore
Lands the voyager at last,
Father in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant”
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