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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.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

HEAVEN CAN WAIT (For All the Holy Innocents)




HEAVEN CAN WAIT


Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. --- St. Mark ch. 10 v. 14, the Holy Bible
 

(For all the Holy Innocents)
 

Heaven can wait. Hell cannot. Cut them
like flotsam and weed-traps wrapping
bloated carrion beelining toward the sea.

What controls cannot contain, infanticide
could quickly provide: terminate them,
abort before a trimester germinates more
burden, stop the plague of life on a dying
planet. When echoes of children’s laughter
could no longer be heard in a muted valley,
elusive peace and quiet would be there,
no duties to rear, no grain shortages.

Wars will cease from an attrition of warriors,
old soldiers wither in unstocked barracks,
the draftees will stop coming. They have all,
all perished, in abortion camps, in famine
camps, in evacuation camps, in flood camps,
in garbage dumps and landfills, God’s Act
stamped across records: avoid insurance runs.

The boys have been massacred before
in the hills of Bethlehem, and the pillage
written about in Gospel language as the day
of the innocents, now los ninos inocentes.
Why can’t that be done again? No in vitros
will be possible, nor will it be allowed either.
No rhythm of swords. Just Syrian chemicals.


Do not copulate, depopulate, depopulate!
Pill boxes will bear this mandate.  Absent
the plea for missing kids, more is better.
Children soldiers? What for? Kill. Be killed.  
Hell will be heaven on earth, death is life.
Nothing will be everything. A Zero sum.
Wrath descended, Apocalypse has come.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

1 comment:

Kristin Berkey-Abbott said...

I love this poem--although the subject matter breaks my heart. Really well done! Thanks for posting it.