AN ARC OF MEMORY

AN ARC OF MEMORY

All he really must do now

is mine those quarries
of memory, like bauxite,
lining the silent boulders
inside burrowing caverns.

They still glisten, these
cracked stones. Briefly.

But he was an innocent lad
from the lowlands then,
he counted them like marbles.

He saw those stones again
on a slow cruise from the city
where, on deck, he could see
the sea and the sky conspire
to eat the sun, a gem still there.

He scoured the lime mountains
in Les Baux; shook a trembling

finger at the source of metals
that shaped the monster planes
that burned his playgrounds.

With downpours of napalm.

Bombs.
When he was young.
But he is old now.
And he is on a dream vacation.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

THE COMMON GOOD: FOUR POEMS ON THE HUMAN CONDITION

THE COMMON GOOD: FOUR POEMS ON THE HUMAN CONDITION

1. Closed

After the tsunami, the school
house on the hill is closed.
At the border ration centre,
supplies are gone. It’s closed.
No funds found for a village
orphanage? It will be closed.
Lean-to clinics for refugees
have been torched. Closed.
Mosques sheltering rebels
are collateral war damages.
Places there remain closed.
Even skies close. They’re dry.

2. Open

Elsewhere, in a busier world,
abortion abattoirs open 24-7.
Cathedrals rise with Sabbath
rake-ins, coffers remain open.
Here, infirmaries are business
opportunities, hospitals open
for insurers galore; pharmacies
at every street corner stay open
for motels that endlessly require
pills, rubbers. Banks, too, open
ATMs for gangland transfers
and late night cash. Here is open.

3. Closed for Good

What place was that with a sign
that promised it was closed for
good? Was that the dispensary
for pain killers crushed fine
into dust-looking opiates for
run-away kids? In this church-
going parish, was that dainty
bungalow a village whorehouse?
If the pastor was found castrated
there, why, pray, close it for good?
He passed by again to make sure
he had the right house: a chapel
at season’s turn, now it’s foreclosed.

 

4. Happy then; now Closed

He misses the carousing of children
singing La Cucaracha under lamps
while they tag each other under
a darkened moon with nary a river.

La cucaracha, ya no puede caminar!
Porque borracho, porque borracho,
Ya no puede caminar.* The street
is dark here and there, the lamps
burnt out, but the crabgrass grow.
All things above and below close.
It must be for the common good.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA



*La Cucaracha—the cockroach; La cucaracha, ya no puede caminar! Porque borracho, porque borracho, ya no puede caminar!—The cockroach can no longer walk! Because it is drunk, because it is drunk! It can no longer walk! (Old Mexican Band song).

TO ARRIVE WHERE WE STARTED: A CONDITION OF SIMPLICITY (Six Poems of Lives So Far)

 

TO ARRIVE WHERE WE STARTED: A CONDITION OF SIMPLICITY

(Six Poems of Lives So Far)

 "We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time."------Little Gidding, Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

"...in the stillness/ Between two waves of the sea./ Quick now, here, now, always---/A condition of complete simplicity." (Ibid)

Where should I go/ so the wind can reach through me,/ so I can rifle through life while/ living it.---From “Great Plains” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 10-19-11

1. Where we Started

We were young and had our hearts and heads

trapped in dreams of mansions in the sky---
we said we will get there somehow, not afraid
of taking on the wherewithals of getting there:

How could I have stayed in that graveyard shift

relaying news around the planet, and sowing
anger in sponge-like minds at the abbey’s
colegio de artes liberales at the peak of day?

How could I have crawled back to put the day’s

paper to bed on dogday afternoons, and come
home to sweat-caked sheets thereafter? All,
all in one grabbing day to eke out this dream?

Could you ever forget the rush or feel of hastily

shorn underwear when we found ourselves
frenziedly marking time before we would rise
again to the hungry calls of earning a living?

At two or three, underclothes were our clothes.

2. Lost Chances

These are the day’s fears come home to roost,

when all that we can look forward to is sleep
to salve hurts heaped as staples of our lives:

How often do we lash out to blame each other

for lost chances at being happy? For laughter
gone from rooms we leave never ever to return?

In other rooms, in other voices, do we hope

to remake, maybe rebuild, a ruptured refuge?
In your nightmare, there is no water in the closet.

3. Holding On

This cool stillness on a bare porch jolts me

from a somber thought: hanging by a thread,
this fluffy piece of thistledown tells us all
about how tenuously we cling to a place we
never really owned. Like that wind tossed
seed-carrier, when we dance our final twirl
and all the dancers off the floor, we hold on
to a lingering melody that keeps us swaying,
alas, to an absent band---an invisible yarn
binding us to a story's end. We barely tremble.

4. Picking up Lost Shells

Here I am, picking up abandoned

shells. Could their quondam settlers
have required more wiggle space,
find ease where there is nothing
left of free and unbridle growing?
I, too, have bartered for lost dreams
but, like Orpheus, I looked too closely.

Have I turned around to size up my

trophy coming out of struggles
to recast quotidian days into happy
residues of life and love? Did I lose
what I endlessly return to, where
coming back is also coming home?
I look back for shells that I had lost.

5. In Our Exile, a Condition of Stillness

A condition of stillness pursues you,

wherever you find your exile, at sea
or in any exploration. You will be there.
It is your image on the mirror: an old
longing for the simplicity long lost
in the shuffle of life, loves, and losses.

Every wave that beats on the ballast

asks: Are you happy at last? Will this
outlast the lingering left-over dread?
Out there where waves break at the edge
of the firmament of quiet stars on stars
you can see through moving darkness.

Where have all the pains remained?

On what shores did you neglect to load
them, overstaying albatross of gloom?
Your heart leaps with the bobbing bow
and stern, and you whisper a prayer
drowned quickly by the sea. You laugh.

They cannot haunt you anymore than

dead memories can bear you down.
You have built a mansion of dreams.
You have been here before, haven’t you?
Exploring the depths of what happiness
you could grab, you will hold them.

You will never let them slip away; you
have earned them. In this brief exile
on the sea, would you hold on to this
sudden grace of simple stillness?
Will this still simplicity pursue you
wherever you roam? Come home then.

6. Knowing Home for the First Time

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 always
this still point to go home to.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

07-14-13,  Mississauga

 

TEMPLES

 

 

TEMPLES  

What temples rise from the deluge of shades,/ what languages of grandeur echo in these ancient retreats?/ Or what language of absence befuddles before this death/ that crumples something to nothing?/ Why is there something rather than nothing?--- From Autumn's Question

1.  A Place to Pray: Sierras (Ca. 70s)*

Cold and rough hewn pews align the red clay floor
where rifles had lain at stock and inert most dawns
when bloodcurdling screams of combat gave way
to hard-earned slumber and crackle of campfire
in tempo with the rhythm of breath heard where life
might still have lingered among the beds carved
from crevices where crag flowers have bloomed
before nightmares came with the fall of sparrows:
this night’s sleep would be tomorrow’s horror.

But daybreak brought instead a temple’s prayer:
Upon this cave, our people will build their church.


*Somewhere in the Sierras of Cagayan Valley, Penablanca, Cagayan, Northern Philippines. A refuge for the Peoples Revolution.

 

2. A Place to Pray: The War Years (ca. 40s)*

(Grandmother’s Oración)

She would pull us down to our knees

on sundowns like this when dusk
was most gentle, tides ebbed quietly
like a murmured prayer: Oración!

Pray, little ones, He will keep us safe.

Pray that in the dark, we find our way.
Pray that the night will be our blanket.
Pray that the dawn brings back our sun.

Was it the distinct tremolo on her voice

that makes these echoes of an evening
orison cut through this familiar silence
that has survived brief lives and years?

Running back to evacuation shelters

in caverns carved through mountains
to hide us from the slit-eyed marauders,
we scurried with gleaned root crop dug

from scorched soil left ashen in bombed

out farms, but sunsets were her signal
moments when she would stop us dead
from our absconding: Vamos a rezar!

Let us pray! Pray that we get there,

With all our hands, fingers, and feet.
Pray that in the dark we find our way,
Pray that sunrise will be there. Pray!

Sudden rain on foggy evenings like this,

the power out, brings back the shadows
of that past world. In the dark, I pray
she blesses me with a touch on my back

and whisper that she, too, is still lifting

her voice to whom it may still concern,
we get to eat the root crop in our bags,
and children in the desert find theirs.

The war years are gone, but fearsome

havoc promises to catch up with us yet:
I pray the bright clearing in the woods
where a tree has fallen is a place to pray.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

*Somewhere in villages of Baguling, a town in La Union Province, Northern Philippines. (Among the mountain tribes, while running from mop up operations of the retreating Japanese Occupation army on the ground and kamikazes in the air.)

 

A LEAP OF FAITH: LESSONS IN THREE TAKES

 

 

A LEAP OF FAITH: LESSONS IN THREE TAKES

Give. Receive. Dance. --- Nijun Mehta

 

1.  Datta:  A Gift Outright

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.

2. Dayadhvam: Lessons on Receiving  

When the torch of desire burns clean
you would have learned all there is to learn:

To give, Datta. To feel and care, Dayadhvam.
To own and control, Damyata.Therefore,
To love beyond all loving because it is pure
like the mother suckles her infant. Give.

To know when caring will make things grow
like the raindrops nourish but will not sting.

To have and to hold even when that lashes
irreducible hurts to weary hearts that care.
It is for this that, naked, we halloo in the rain,
Let it come! Let all desires fill our dry vessels.

Then we wake up to the warm caress of the Sun
for the day is always new, the flower lovely.

Is not the rose lovelier when its thorns sharpen?
Does not the potter’s knife need its razor edge
to pare the lips of the wine jar and smoothen
its mouth that lovers may drink to full desire?

Bare your body then to its wild abandon, salve
it with the cool spring water now welled

from the earth, and open your mouth to kiss
the sunlight, defy the anguish. Never say, not yet.
Let it come! Let the leaves fall on this Upanishad,
because the leap of faith is never to say Not yet.

3. Damyata:  A Mud Dance Dialogue

Mud as fire extinguisher? Bloody overkill, I say.
Douse it with a spit of brandy and gin chaser,
and off to a cabin at the edge of the woods! Huh.

“How about we try some joy”? A blowhard’s line.
How about a walk in the woods, mud and all,
and answer old questions left unanswered:

Is love most nearly itself when it ceases to matter?
What is need that it remains unsatiated, unmet,
when lovers seek ardour to brim beyond fulfillment?

Ah, let’s slosh away in the mud where mud is,
and we might yet find a balm for this burning ember
we carry around like raw marks singed in our palms.

What joy is there where union is not communion?
What need is there for glowing embers flaming out
of buckets? I would rather we danced in this muck
of mud and find our freed fears become the dance,
our only dance, before the stroke of midnight,
before the convulsions of laughter turn to pain.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, July 11, 2013

 

LEITMOTIFS: HOME

 

 

LEITMOTIFS

1. A Warm Hug of Home

Would the cup of my palms nestle you?

Give you a nestling’s echoing chamber,
where you could trill all you want or can?

That wind behind the trees, would it pick

your notes up and let your song be whole
again, your refrains brave and true again?

Through these woods, troll like a stout

heart whose one crescendo is of gladness
that the day’s night must bring a sunrise

as bright as it is gentle when it presses

your cold back to a warm hug of home,
where you will fearlessly sing your song:

Fly with me to the swaying tree tops!

Reach out for me. I am back. I am home.

2. Winding Your Way Home

My errands get simpler now: cut marks

On trees, branches, rocks, leaves, walls,
wherever I know you will wind your way
coming home. It is a long route back.

But you will find them like those prints

of fallen leaves mottling the lake girdling
bluffs we run to when we retrieve lost
memories that somehow remain clear:

we smell them, we touch them, we feel

them like waning fevers that stay warm
on our flushed faces. We will not forget.
We are condemned to remember. Always.

--ALBERT B. CASUGA

BEING PROUD OF HER

 

 

BEING PROUD OF HER*

 

(For Mimi, Blanca and Ding+ Nolledo)

Let me at it---get me to my concupiscibles.

Green. Ripples. Sidled boats. Verdant growth.
Do you not see the metaphor stripped  bare
Of all that is recondite? Lorca saw it: Verde.
Old Nick’s barking tremolo swooned to it—
Evensong lullaby hushed his beer-body riot.
“Shh…the quiet lord cometh, he is on his way,
Laving ripples murmur to the brackish rocks
Serving sentry on the bluff: it is the end of day,
One more goodbye, one more sleep. No cocks
Crow here anymore.”  Mimi has a good eye.

Do you not feel what you ought to also see?

The idled empty boats are Indios Bravos tables.
Our tippling comrades are not there anymore,
Like the gin-ran pumps of absent boatmen,
These tubs tug at loose ropes linking them
Briefly like tumbler-toasting, tired, trolling
Troubadours. Beyond, it will always be green;
The gentle whimsy of wind is caressing here.
But the lights will be turned down soon,
Like sundown’s stealth, the creeping gloom.

At the old haunt—Nick, Pete, Pascua-Sanchez,

Papen, Erwin, Recah, Blanca, Adrian, Cuadra,
Are still shadows on the wall, not unlike catfish
Bobbing up for air as we did, drunken Bravos,
Fighting for breath when carousing left us
Struggling to surface from the depths of dives
Into bottomless pain and puzzlement: why
Did we have to walk out, foglike, into a dawn
Where bright days turned us all into harlequins
Miming what we thought were loud promises
to stay alive like these green dancing ripples
moving my eyes now grafted into Mimi’s Eye.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, 07-07-13

 

*A poem written in the persona of the late Philippine writer and novelist non pareil Wilfrido D. “Ding” Nolledo, father of artist Melissa Nolledo, and beloved husband of writer-editor Blanca Datuin-Nolledo, who writes a blog “Cropsharing in the Bounty of Love” where she collects hitherto unknown remembrances of one of the finest writers in English in the Philippines, “But for the Lovers” author, Wilfrido Nolledo.