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ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

THE WHIMPER AFTER: A FUGUE



THE WHIMPER AFTER: A FUGUE


 

This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper. ---From “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

 HER LONGING

After after, is there anything or anyone left
to sing the hammock songs? After after,

will you still be there waiting, a warm blanket
in your hands, to throw the flannel on my lap,

lest I drool myself to a sundown slumber
and promptly forget it gets cold in the winter?

Aiee, amor mio, despues de nuestros amores,*
when love is gone, after all the countless days,

where shall we find that place called after?
If it is lost, too, might there be some other?
 

HIS SILENCE

By sundown, they will be gone, like long shadows
on my porch walls. All the fierce singing done,
what remains is the quiet murmur of the bourn.
Its stream will not return, nor will the swallows.

But while they flitted from tree tops to broken
perches, did they not cry out their bravest songs?
These are our elm trees, these are our willows,
we pieced our homes here together, we roosted.

At the bluffs, we find the edge of the woods muted
now. Soon, even the cackling gulls will dive a final
swoon, catch the last crayfish lost on boulders left
bare by ebbing tide that must also leave its shore.

It is troths like these that will not last, nothing
endures. The silence can only become a whimper.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 


 

*O, my love, after all our loving…

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