POEMS ON AN OMEN

POEMS ON AN OMEN

 
(For Poet and Social Activist Mila D. Aguilar, While Waiting)


1. THE CANON OF THE WAY AND OF VIRTUE

Beauty is an omen.
--Tao Teh Ching


Of Mao Ch’iang and Li Chi, most attractive women,
flutter of bird wings, dash of deer, fright of fish
and flush of fear, the counsel of Chuang Tzu is said:
“Beauty is an omen.”


So we saunter where crackle of pine cones touches
softly what remains of our feet or is left of our ears;
almost at the end of our walk, we find the ripple
upon the pond meaningless to us now.
O Mao Ch’iang, soon enough even our eyes
will lose the sky. Nothing, nothing stirs.

Nothing is the way for everything -–
the loft upon the Hunan hill, the dark city down there,
the quietness visited upon us, Li Chi, all land
that spawns the life of dying and death –
everything walks the pilgrim journey to nothing.
Nothing is everything here.


2. TRANSFIGURATIONS: IS BEAUTY AN OMEN?


A condition of complete simplicity/ (Costing not less than everything)---Little Gidding, The Four Quartets, T.S.Eliot


Cocooned in a condition of utter simplicity,
the silkworm will not stop oozing out its tapestry
onto the point of death which is also its beauty.

How much beauty can be eked out of pain?
Like the hurt bivalved flesh of the grimy oyster,
would the papillon wings glisten like a pearl?

But this one is spun out of patience: there
must be radiance out of a cocoon’s dark
confines. It can only break into mobile light.

Colour the mariposa green, would that matter?
Dye the silk out of its consumed gossamer nets,
would that stop its flying out of a crude beginning?

Arrested from its final transfiguration, the worm
turns and it is on a table–the grub of culinary
quintessence! Quite like an earlier challenge:

“Eat of my flesh, drink of my blood. This covenant
shall not be broken. I will be with you again when
the radiance of this goblet dims into a eucharist.”

A condition of simplicity? Bear beauty and perish?
Offer an unending dream in a kingdom, and be slain?
The tale of the supreme sacrifice is also immolation.

What does it matter that I die then, if I flew out
of a trellis like the monarch butterfly, that started
as a wormed-out silkworm then food for the hungry?

I would be the worm, the injured mother pearl,
the crucified madman who asked that his flesh
be eaten, his blood quaffed, and live forever.

Beauty is an omen. Destroy this vessel of clay,
and it can only spill the reddest of wine, the
stoutest of ale: a dangerous promise of eternal life.


—ALBERT B. CASUGA
Mississauga. December 11, 2014


( "Transfiguration", a painting by Janet Weight Reed of London, England

 

LOOKING BACK

LOOKING BACK


Mudfish between fingers, rice stalks...
whipped by whistling monsoon wind
on our thin backs, rain-pelted faces:
you cannot look back at them in anger.

But you do. You have lost them forever.
You can never be there again. Forever.
You will go back to the old schoolyard,
but you will not find the desk you carved

her name on, hearts, initials, arrows,
all gone from sandpapered desk tops,
dark paint covering the deepest cuts
like healed cankers, mended wounds,

scars of the rawest longing for the girl
who had the longest hair, wiliest smile,
cleverest excuses for going home late,
“O, we cleaned the blackboards and all.”

Are the moss-gowned shore boulders
still there? The rocks in whose crevices
you buried secret vows to always be there
for each other in this place, this town?

That tamarind tree in whose branches
your kite got caught, rended bamboo
ribs cracked you wept over until she
stilled your quivering shoulders in her

arms, is it still there between the hills
you named after her, body parts you
were too scared to call were like hers?
Does the tree still bear its tangy fruit?

There will be more questions. Will you
find the answers you need to go home?
You will even ask the trees, if you must,
but even they will no longer talk to you.


---Albert B. Casuga

HURRICANE POEMS FOR A LARK

HURRICANE POEMS FOR A LARK

 

1. Who has seen the Wind?

 

Always the uninvited guest, the wind
pushes through the porch into the house,
and scatters leaves collected in its wake,
like a shower of crackling seeds freed
from pods that do not come from here.

 

Strange, how it barrels through rooms
disturbing spiders spinning webs busily
before the storm ebbs, safety nets strung
among sepia-tinted pictures on the wall.

 

What did it miss along the way? Winds
as interlopers are blind levelers–the rich
run for supplies as quickly as the poor do.

In New York, as in Manila, the howler
brought in the flood, and left laughing.

 

2.  She Left Uproariously Howling

 

Her fury might as well have risen from the sea

Wreck every hearth and heart on her wake:
It should not matter, these are worms wriggling
To overstay in rotten mounds of a leftover paradise
Abandoned by leeches of fuel, stones, fire powder,
Who ripped the sides of mountains for nickel
And gold to build the ships that burned villages
From the sky and left like the wind laughing
After the slaughter of the hallooing innocents
Yelping hosannas to a rain of napalm, welcoming
Death and dying as deliriously as they did some
Distant rain brought by growls of sudden thunder.

 

3. Beware the Deluge Reprised

 

A Deluge comes. Only this time, we have no Arks

Nor Ararats to salvage all who hope to find
Another Blue Planet in an extended Universe.
No one has applied to be a Noah. They are all,
All retired and tired of saving a ruthless specie,
The homo viator whose journey brings nothing
But a discovery that he has lost the Love he had
For all the meek who shall inherit the Earth.

—ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, December 8, 2014

 

AFTER "AFTER": A LONGING

AFTER “AFTER”: A LONGING

 

(For all the Old Lovers Caught in the Cold Rain)

 

1. A Hammock Song

 

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, will there always be another?

Will this longing for the warmth of a gentle caress,

when nights and beds are cold, find its answer?

Will it be a knowing touch on my back after after?

 

2. Her Frolic in the Rain

 

Tomorrow, I will walk through an abandoned garden in the rain:

I will tilt my face to some grey sky like an agape earthen jar,

Catch myself some nourishing rain. Must I, on my gnarled knees,

Beg for these hurts to set me free? My hummingbirds will fly off

leaving me this mansion of joy, but oh, a finite hint of eternity.

 

Sometime soon, I must frolic in this uncertain weather, dash

through this shower of grace, sate my parched throat in the rain,

drink myself deliriously happy. But after after, will you be there?

 

 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, December 4, 2014

 

 

SINGING HER THE LULLABIES OF GREY AFTERNOONS

 

 

MY POEMS TODAY were prompted by the music of Andre Rieu while he played "Edelweiss". "Memories", "Somewhere My Love", "My Way", and "Time to Say Goodbye" which are tunes I used to lull my wee lass with. Marie Clementine even remembers the Filipino love song sung to her often by my wife, her "yoya":---"Ikaw lamang ang aking iibigin" ... and she would continue..." 'kaw laman... mamahalin". Will she remember the tunes when she grows older? I'll bet my bottom dollar, she would. ...I would; in spite of dotage, or even dementia. Huh.

SINGING HER THE LULLABIES ON GREY AFTERNOONS

The lullaby has a long poetic tradition. In these poems, I try to capture the rhythm of those songs that are invariably sung to put people (babies) to sleep. (How bad can they get? Or how gentle?)

1. THE SNOWMAN LULLABY

Close your eyes and fairy lights will lead you
Away from the dark and gloom that scare you:
In your dreams, do you run through brackish snow?
Climb leafless trees or swing from a broken bough?
Where the river bends, do you gather rotting fish,
Glean carrion left from a summer’s fishing mess?
Has the snowman’s head fallen off its melting body?
Its stick hands twisted like pretzels. Arrows really.
The carrot nose has become its stabbing tooth,
Where both eyes were, now Cyclops orb is left
On a conehead of dripping snow; a crushed face
Stares blankly at a mid-day sun whose lapping rays
Forebode another season for yet another reason
To accept that what lives is also ripe for destruction.


(O, my aching heart, it aches, it hurts,
It hurts badly, it hurts to the core.
Kindly spare me your gentle nurture,
For I dread death’s coming spectre.)*
 

 2. THE WIND LULLABY

Close your eyes and let the wind rip through
Tears and cracks and cranny and broken doors, too.
Grip the tightened string on your wayward kite,
No wind could wreck nor snap it loose from flight.
You will ride the wind, my boy, and touch the sun,
Though frightful prayers plead that you must run
From the dreams that have become nightmares,
From the fallen kites; run from the fearsome snares.
Life is a trap, much like the burlap waiting downstream,
When you get there, you are enmeshed -- do not scream.
It is too late to scream. Close your eyes, shut them tight.
Life is not a waking dream. You have just begun to fight.


(O, my aching heart, it aches, it hurts,
It hurts badly, it hurts to the core.
Kindly spare me your gentle nurture,
For I dread death’s coming spectre.)*


--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
_____________
Ilocano refrain of the lullabies.
*Annnay, pusok, annay, annay,
Nasaem, naut-ut la unay.
Itdem kaniak ta pannaranay
Ta kaasiak a maidasay.
--- Duay-ya: Dungdungwen Kanto
(A Lullaby of Love), Ilocano Lullaby Refrain


Painting of a sleeping baby by Janet Weight Reed of London, England

 

THE STILL POINT: A FINAL REFUGE

TODAY'S POEM: Where one will find a final sanctuary. How does one get there? What kind of a refuge is it?


THE STILL POINT: A FINAL REFUGE


(For Dreamers)

Stand still. Find your still point.
You will find a sanctuary there.

All the wind you can whistle for
will run through you like spirits
hovering, pulling you through
all the small boxes keeping you
your own unshackled prisoner,
moored to fears fencing you in
like the pages of a book bound
to a rind, like a caged sparrow
perched on a bar will hop down
rather than fly in narrow air.

When you get there, that place
will not be there till you find it.
Build it from fondest dreams,
house them in open chambers.
Let the winds of everywhere
and everything rifle through
its corridors to find you free,
unafraid to roam elsewhere
because you know there is this
still point to go home to. Always.


--- Albert B. Casuga

 Mississauga, November 19, 2014

A WAITING GAME: SUMMING UP

TODAY'S POEM was prompted by a line from "The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran about pain being the beginning of understanding. Is it the prize of having to wait till we get back to our final home? Where might this be? We lived briefly in a home we could not have. When we got it built, we had to leave. The pain is knowing we got a raw deal, or knowing that, we will know why and understand. Time to stop then. Time to Sum up Accept that pain is one's gain --- it can only lead us back... to a happy place we have lost but will regain.

A WAITING GAME: SUMMING UP


"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. / And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief."-- Khalil Gibran, "The Prophet"


Looking for a good time to stop,
is to stop looking like slumping
on a fallen trunk or a trail rock
jagged and jutting out of the bluff.

Morning walks get longer along
empty spaces before familiar curbs
signal a turn to what we wait for:
the final bend. We are back home.

Because we have seen the clues,
because we have seen them all
already, I feel it is time to stop
waiting, sum up the bill, and go.

What was I given to bear the pain
of knowing that I did not know?
Or build a home I could not live in?
What tools must I now return?

In summing up, I will discount this,
in the game of haggling for a place
back in the Garden. Our stay here
was overpaid. We waited too long

for that room with a better view,
that terrace with a canopy of roses,
and blue birds trilling on the sill.
O, for a touch of that distant sky!

“HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
Now Albert is coming back,
make yourself a bit smart.”* Eliot,
of course, said it for me earlier.

How long ago was that, when I
read those Wasteland lines? How
long have I waited to use them?
Is this a good time, yet? I waited.

Next time around, if there is one,
I will be smart. I will settle only for
a room where I could see the sky
and the sea conspire to eat the sun.


---Albert B. Casuga
Mississauga, November 18, 2014

* T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland, II. A Chess Game, T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950)

 

SOMEWHERE, THE OTHER LIVES

SOMEWHERE, THE OTHER LIVES


(For Luisa Igloria who Abhors “Othering”)

Is this dome of midnight stars also a strum
for a quiet waking into a space of loneliness?
Or are these spaces our own echo chambers
where ripples of our calls are heard by others?

Somewhere a wing roils the air that the other
breathes. Somewhere the tremulous murmur
of a prayer is answered. Somewhere an old
question is asked: Am I my brother’s keeper?


---Albert B. Casuga
Mississauga, November 16, 2014

GIVING BACK

GIVING BACK


(For Father Francisco R. Albano)

It is what he has absently forgotten,
that he still abides in a strange gyroscope
of happenstance of giving and taking,
of coming and going, visions and revisions.

If he had his druthers, he’d rather not be given:
too little time for too much to give back on.
A keen eye to see both sides of a magic coin?
Be a magistrate then, look for the right and just.

Or a poet who sees both sides of a wall. Or mirror.
When someone sent him a throne of words,
he built cathedrals of thought no one understood.
“It’s poetry, mon ami!” He said it’s worth a shrug.

Like cold tea. He struggles in his windy spaces
to finish the promise of the Word to be his word,
that he might give back the flame he borrowed,
and say, “I kept your Fire and gave it Fervour.”


---Albert B. Casuga

LEST WE FORGET: REMEMBRANCE DAY POEMS

JE ME SOUVIENS

November 11, 2014

LEST WE FORGET:

REMEMBRANCE DAY POEMS

 

 

WHAT THE WAVES SAID: A MEMENTO MORI

(For all War Widows and Lovers)

She must go back there, one way or the other,
it is a dive into her origin. Why not a caress?
She will need one to get to the other. Knowing
them all, the smell of the brine, of pungent
sweat on the backs of the lads who carried
her into the church then floating with mud:

They held her gingerly by her thighs, ruffles
wafting in the unseasonal wind, her panuelo
lashing their faces then glistening lustfully
as they stole forbidden glances at her clean
legs dangling, kicking furtively at their sides.
Drenching her, breaking waves urge her return.

She could still taste the rice coffee on his lips
when he kissed her mouth and vowed his troth.
He left for a war, and could not come home,
cut down at some shore wading toward a hail
of sand and pebble, dying for God and country,
yet could not crawl back to live by his promise.

She must go back there, to lie on that shore
at sundown, drench herself with his tardy touch,
as waves break frenziedly on her breasts and
caress her gently with the ebbing tide, when
she goes home. Laughing, the waves said so,
as she felt them turn warm around her bare calf.


---Albert B. Casuga

 

THE DANCE


For Guerrilla Comrades

The nape is a natural anchor; dancers
can tell how swiftly rhythmic footwork
become gyrations close enough to know
that she will not fall from his embrace.

This is how it should have always been:
he , being led by her wide steps caught
quickly off by a frenzy of thighs playing
the evening’s tease --- They are yours,

however you want them, if you can
catch them lithely tripping the light
fantastique--- she, a laughing Jezebel,
grown bold with giggles of an ingénue.

What they would give, if they could hold
on to that night they danced, absently
ignoring the high command’s summons
of storming Corregidor* at break of dawn.

He said it would be a brief encounter;
will be back before she digs her fingers
into some rough folds of a dancer’s nape,
and feels a strange tickle on her hands.

I shall keep my night lamp lit all day long,
you know which window to climb through.
But the nights never ended, the dance did.
She now idles by her window counting waves.


---Albert B. Casuga


*Corregidor -- Philippine warfront WWII. Readers may simply replace this with any place where guerrilla movements exist. The context is hospitable to all lost love.

 

 

 

 

CLIMBING BEYOND A PAUPER SPACE

CLIMBING BEYOND A PAUPER SPACE:
TWO POEMS ON COMPASSION

1. The Other

What if this place were made only for the other?
You are yourself, but you are also others’ other.
Were you conceived for yourself, or for a specie?
Someone must extend the process of evolution.
 
Your first act out of the womb was to let out a cry.
Was it not to alert the birthing other you’re here?
And you will bring joy to a union forged in dreams,
but you could always be the unwanted obligation.
 
What if you were the inevitable happenstance
come from the aches of groin and gravid reasons?
Are you an issue of love or lust? An afterthought?
When did you start to even aspire to be yourself?
 
Dare you grow then to even ask: What do I want?
What do I need? Selfish angst? No. Must-ask ones.
 

2. Compassion

One cannot give what one does not have, operatio
sequitur esse. Find and feed your hunger to know
what you are here for. Are you a brother’s keeper?
Or does a lover keep you? Either way, a hunger.
 
If you were for the other, you must be provident;
but fill your tills first before giving a ruddy cent.
Is your neighbour the village thief? Love him.
Clothe the naked, as you would with a fig leaf.
 
Before long, you would have guessed how little
you are without the other, and learn to whistle
in the dark, and wait, and build, and gather
behind walls, until, one on top of the other,
 
you begin to climb beyond your pauper space
to occupy a lost garden, a haven, as your place.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA
Revised November 5, 2014, Mississauga

 

POEMS FORBIDDING SORROW AND TERROR

 

POEMS FORBIDDING SORROW AND TERROR

 

(In honour of Argyles Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who died standing on guard)

 

(For his son, Marcus, at 5)

  

THE GUNS OF OTTAWA*

 

Hardly has the crackle of grim gunfire

subsided around the mute emblem
of courage,  faith,  and the pyrrhic fall
of the young soldier (kilt, rifle, and all,
bloodied by blind jihadist mayhem),
where he stood guard to honour his land’s
heroes who have laid their precious lives---
when these fearless  accidental patriots
rushed unerringly to the sight of blood,
pumped his ebbing heart as one of them
chanted: “Hang on, we love you; trust us,
we love you, your country loves you, God
loves you!” But Cpl. Nathan Cirillo died.
The assassin sneered: “In bullets we trust.”
 

A HERO IS BURIED HERE

 

A year from now, his little Marcus, askance

At five, will know that they buried his father
One rainy autumn day in this field of heroes.
He will scarcely remember that magistrates
Of a grateful land stuttered quiet gratitude
While they looked at this wee lad march tall
Alongside his father’s bier, flag in one hand,
His mother’s clasped in the other, little palms
Still steady, still lusting to clutch kite strings
Flown toward the grey skies bidding goodbye
To his friend and hero, Nathan Cirrilo, Dad
On most days, Sir Brave Argyle Soldier today,
When teary-eyed grand magistrates told him
They will always have this abiding gratitude
And faith that he, too, one day, will be a hero
Who would make the last supreme sacrifice
Of laying down his life like a patriot’s son,
For his Canada, his home and native land.
Sir Argyle Marcus, son of Argyle Cpl. Cirillo.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, Oct. 28, 2014

 

 

 

 

*Revised from Oct. 26 version.

DYING TO LIVE: A PROSE POEM

 

DYING TO LIVE: A PROSE POEM

If this were a glimpse at dying and how the mind, fragile as it is, could pull one back to life, I would work at it, break free from cages that have held me captive, look at the burning sun long and hard until I am wedded to its brilliance and finally unified. This is the vessel that I offer you to have and to hold, but I must fill it with the salving grace that will mold my injured spirit back to what I carefully surrendered for you to mend and nurture when it had foundered, lost at some hostile sea, a boat shorn of sail, unanchored.  Like Pygmalion, I will chisel every jagged chip, remold every broken edge, to remake this cup and will unfold before your eyes like an earthen jar spun out of my hand, pared clean at its brim, to collect a wellspring of fluid nectar to last us a lifetime of all that is sweet and kind.

 

---Albert B. Casuga

Mississauga, October 27, 2014

COUNTERPOINTS: TWO SWIMMING LESSONS

 

COUNTERPOINTS: TWO SWIMMING LESSONS

 

1. IN HER TIME: A SWIMMING LESSON

(For Marie Clementine)

 

Will you grow older than these lessons,

Mon chère? Will you gather pictures
Like dada-abuelo peppers and papers
His dusty study with his world’s magic?

Papa will no doubt pin this on his wall,

I wager all my left-over memories,
Mama, too, will: it is this lesson of love
and daring we will always remember.

 “Go, chère, find your stride and swim,

Kick and swim, paddle and swim, Go!
No dreads, brave girl, this is your show:
Swing your arms, our happy mermaid!”

There can only be joy with your striving,
Not after the wind, but for gentle grace,

The courage you must find while weaving
Through ripples, eddying smile on your face.
 

2. IN OLDER TIMES: A SWIMMING LESSON

(For Father)

How much of those happy times

would you bring back, like the waves
ebb but must always rush back?

It is the sea that returns you intact

into my now empty days, windy days,
your laughter always a raw memory.

You threw me into those restless

waves, cried out a challenge: Swim!
Kick hard, swing your arms! Swim!

And I never stopped, not for hurts,

not for lost dreams, nor for losses.
You warned me never ever to cry.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, October 26, 2014