THE QUIET DISTANCE

 

 

THE QUIET DISTANCE

(For Mother+ on Christmases Past and Yet to Come)

 

1. Her Noche Buena

Did you wake up for Noche Buena?*

Lit the balled candle on the belen?*

Do you still put those candles away
for another Pascua de los muertos?*

I can almost see you cranking open

the heavy lid of that narra trunk

at the foot of your bed where his
picture stands sentry while you sleep.

How long did it take you this time

to rearrange the animals around

the manger? Reposition, you’d say

but they’re always in the same place.

The lamb snuggles closest to the box

you stuff with dried grass for hay,

the ass farthest, the horse between.

Why? I would always ask while I,

insolent tot, handed you the wrong

fauna at a time. You would laugh

at how San Jose landed on your palm
when you asked for the donkey, an

angel when you yelled for a shepherd,

a magus when you barked for a burro,

and on and on until you’d pitch me

the hard-packed ball of saved candle

drips from father’s grave on the one

other fiesta you’d get up from sick bed

for---but Noche Buena is a rare treat:

you’d eat pan de sal, a whole banana.

2. Her Belen de Pascua

“Para mi fuerza, para mi belen de pascua,”*

you would sheepishly explain an appetite

we plead for each day you’d remember

father building the manger with you long

after he had the last laugh when, like me,

he would give the dingiest animal figure

instead of a king, a shepherd, or an angel,

and simply did not get up from a crumple

laughing at you when you threw him

back the make-believe cow dung, manure

for the grand project of a straw stable

that father said was wrong: it was a hole

in the city of Petra in that Bethlehem hill,

and there were no inns to take Him in.

You buried him with that Belen de Pascua,*

Mother, and could not quite remake one

you would delight describing to a devil’s

detail to polite and knowing neighbours,

who would drop by to gawk at your porch

where the only clay image in its right place

was the baby in the manger whose name

you kept on muttering was father’s name.

On nights like this, I scare myself, Mother,

with the spectre of the quiet distance.
 

3. Her Pascua de Alma On The Hill

Would you and Father have enjoyed this site,

atop a hill overlooking the sea, a pantheon

of verdant grass, bushes, and arboles de fuego?

I can still see the Belen you last built with him.

The infant on the crib of hay looked old,

mottled with the splotches of years and use

much like the darkened bronze plate marking

your final niche where  you and your lover,

my father and friend, must still be arguing

between guffaws of fun, of which magus must

bring the jug of gin, which angel the trumpet

startling the shepherds, which donkey brays

and which Joseph looks askance at a son,

a king with no dominion, gurgling little noises,

that would have been silent screams of infants

quartered in pieces known henceforth as innocents

who must continue to perish until He comes again

to gather all the hurting children into his House.

O, Mother, I hurt still from this quiet distance,

where there are no longer any Belen de Pascua.
 

--ALBERT B. CASUGA

  

*Noche Buena, Christmas Eve; belen, Christmas manger; Pascua de los muertos, Feast of the Beloved Departed; Para me fuerza, para mi belen de Pascua, for my strength, to build my Christmas manger.

 

A GHAZAL ON THE VOW WRITTEN ON A RAINBOW

 

 

A GHAZAL ON THE VOW WRITTEN ON A RAINBOW

 Simeon, look at the sky, its script of rain/Is part of it somehow, the Christmas vow.--- Simeon Dumdum Jr., A Ghazal for my Friends at Christmas.

 

At sundown, when the sun sets, the Christmas vow

Is clear on the script of rain---a covenant of rainbow.

Après Le Deluge, it was not the vulture sent down

To mark the end of the covenant on the rainbow. 

The dove brings the rain script down from an ark

Now stuck on an Ararat of some promised rainbow. 

It will be gone before it comes, the curse of living

Without the meaning behind the façade of a rainbow. 

There will come from the wilderness of spite taking

Shape in the indigo of that covenant on the rainbow, 

Dark, murky, unclean in the cerulean pad of the sky,

An arch with warm colours as vowed by that rainbow. 

I shall be with you until the consummation of colour

Upon the stark promise of that convenant rainbow: 

I will be with you, forever and forever; I will be with you,

Mother, at the end of the covenant-coloured rainbow. 

You are with me until the dying of returning swallows,

But how much have we pledged instead on a rainbow

In this stormy weather, in the expanse of a blue sky?

To bring us all to the house of the covenant rainbow, 

The Child warmed by the donkey’s feed in Bethlehem

Will be our promise indelibly inked on that rainbow. 

He will still be there holding the hues of the covenant

with you, forever and forever, at the end of the rainbow.

 ---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

A COVENANT PROMISED ON A RAINBOW: FOUR QUARTETS

 

 

 

A COVENANT PROMISED ON A RAINBOW: FOUR QUARTETS

(For the Children of Newtown, Connecticut)

 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

1.

“No,” he screamed, there was no one at his porch

Except the empty tea cup on his littered writing table,

“This is too senseless to be silent about or to be brave

about, no face of courage can take this! I won’t!” 

He will break his promise to meet every gory mayhem

Slaughtering children with the silence and stillness

His father said was the surest manner of disarming

Even a juramentado, a deranged reaper for Allah. 

Killing for one’s god is a talisman that will not work

With silence, but this was a young boy mowing down

Frenziedly scared toddlers hardly weaned off pacifiers.

“Personality disorder,” the dumbstricken explain away. 

Exposure to a culture of violence, the one that inures

Even the brightest lads and giggling lasses to the gore

Of war and murder most foul, savants of madness say,

Their wrists limp on tall tumblers of champagne.

 

2.

He stared at the  horrified faces of puling children

Beelined to a sanctum, rushing armed men skipping

To the rhythm of combat, teachers-mother-hen-like

Clucking for their wards, wailing tots, under tables. 

The idiot box manages to capture purely idiotic,

Inhumanly stupid caterwauling of pundits, governors,

And every common barber shop jerk crying for a lynch,

Begging for a posse of armed mothers and fathers. 

But the geek with a mushroom head will not give them

The pleasure of the hunt. He killed a score of innocents

Much like the disembowling of holy innocents of yore

Ordered by an insane bastard out to slay a rumored 

Messiah, one born in the cradle of wealth, an heir

To a King David whose throne will outlast all rulers

Who seat on clay or rotten stubbs, and offed himself.

Could he have guessed, instead  one born in a stable?  

A sovereign on a donkey trotting to the hisses

Of eunuched holy men when his time came to fulfill

The raves of the man yammering about a man-god

Come to restore a paradise? His head ended up on a platter. 

3.

He, only he, will be able to sleep well tonight, all nights,

Even; he knows these abattoir of butchers in a posh,

Clean and well-lit postcard village, these cold slicing

Of throats in all the war zones of a beleaguered planet,

The quartering of children in Goma, Congo, genocides

In Syria, Palestine, Maguindanao, Virginia,  Oregon,

Aurora, Jerusalem, Egypt, Norway, the pogroms

Of a larger-than-life midget revered still as Comrade Stalin, 

The ovens of syphillitic Hitler, the daily dose of infanticide,

Mothers strangling their listless children in bathtubs,

Fathers killing all their trailer-sheltered encumbrances

To spite the hell out of cuckolding wives, Adam Lanza, 21, 

Blasting his mother’s head off---a rehearsal as a prelude

To the slaughter of the Connecticut innocents, suicides

Of love-starved ingénues clutching Facebook taunts

Of naked pictures and faceless phalluses. He knows. 

4.

And he will, after today’s silent scream, meet all disasters

With stoic silence and stillness, because they are cries

In the Wilderness, not far from the edge of these woods,

That a Second Coming is ripe. He needs to hoard all 

This anger, this unyielding hatred, this wordless suffering

As starkly honest as the whines of a copycat Job, will be

Transformed into the purest of Love, the one weapon left

To smite all who mock the descended avenger with his sword, 

His terrible swift sword, wielded with light born of the one

Love that shall tie all into unity again, body into spirit,

The essential joy of soaring with the godhead reigning

Forever with the many who have melded into One. 

E pluribus unum. His body is ours, His blood runs through us.

At last, he will recognize from the throne of his little porch

How men shall all be part of a cathedral of thought, of Love,

An unbreakable Unity full of silence and stillness brought

By Him/Her in a long-expected covenant promised on a rainbow.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, December 15, 2012

 

SOMALIA'S BETHLEHEM

(Click on image to zoom in on Text)

 

 

SOMALIA’S BETHLEHEM

 

Sometime in the gloom of this dread, a hill

of burning sand replaces the stable manger,

and Somalia’s desert becomes a new world’s

Bethlehem. In its famine zones, a limp baby

struggles to stay alive. Minhaj Gedi Farah,

starves under a mosquito net in the world’s

largest refugee camp, “even his mother

has given up hope that her baby boy, Minhaj,

would survive,” reports the Associated Press.  

But magi and shepherds alike did not need a star

to lead them back to his tent. No gold, no myrrh,

nor incense gifted, just a mix of Plumpy’Nut,

AP calls a “cute name for vitamins and minerals

saving Minhaj. Three packets a day of the peanut-

based paste help a child gain up to two pounds

in a single week. It doesn’t require cooking or

refrigeration...Today, Baby Minhaj is thriving,

growing from seven lbs. in July to 18 pounds

in October, 2011.”  

And our world will not give up, on all

that is innocent. Not this boy, not all Earth’s

boys. No massacre will cut them down again,

nor troops to slay them in brutal Kenya camps.

There will be time enough for a Calvary, but not now,

nor Minhaj need be a redeemer. Mankind in his tent

will not be taxed for the sturdiest crucifying lumber,

all they need are 21 packets of Plumpy’Nut at $10,

and a deluge of epiphany: they are this brother’s keeper.

 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

THIS FIRE MUST BURN: A CHRISTMAS POEM

 

 

THIS FIRE MUST BURN: A CHRISTMAS POEM

 

No light shines that is not itself a road/ No other door opens except in dreams.---From “In Dreams” by Simeon Dumdum, Jr.

 

This fire must burn fiercely to build the road

that ends at the foundling’s darkened cavern.  

Blind eyes will discover how only hearts can

find where the flame has been lit to crackle  

through endless nights of endless dreaming

for an advent that is also the final leaving:  

How long will this journey take to open doors

that will take him in? Why are they all closed?  

A peasant woman and her bewildered lover,

huddle around a trough of dampened feed,  

and cannot hear their fears drowned by hope

that their wildest nightmare of an unborn  

child would be a prince of peace whose light

is all he could offer the wounded and the poor.  

For these afflicted, the light will all be roads,

to his kingdom where dreams are also doors  

to a bountiful garden carved from twin hills

of birth and crucifixion. Bethlehem is Calvary.  

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

 

GLOIRE SEBAHUNDE, 5, SHOT IN GOMA, CONGO

(Please Click on Image to Zoom in on Text. Photo by Jerome Delay, The Associated Press)

GLOIRE SEBAHUNDE, 5, SHOT IN GOMA, CONGO
YOKED HAIKU TO REMEMBER HER BY

1. The Surgeon

I will mend you, Gloire,
If it takes all my dark days.
Heal, little girl, heal.

2. O.R. Staff

Stay with us, wee lass,
Do not close your eyes on us,
Stay alive, Gloire.

3. Survivor in Goma

She ran all the way
To the ration store here
To get some corn. Gloire.

4. The Rescue Team

Slumped on a mound
Of brown rice, she did not cry.
She bled silently.

O, Gloire. You could not
Even whimper like a fallen
Dog, caught with a bone.

You held on to your
Bag of corn, kernels blood red
From your gushing wound.

O Gloire, you even
Smiled and laughed a little:
You got Maman corn

She could cook for you
And your now dead brothers, Gloire.
Was it your birthday?

5. The Rebel Soldier

O, little hero, live,
I swear to be brave for you.
Grow strong for Motherland!

6. The Gunman

From this tree, I must
Hang myself in shame, cut my
Throat. I shot this girl.

7. Gloire's First Words

Will mother be mad?
I did not bring home her corn.
Aieee...that hurts, Sir. Aiee...

8. Amani Zaliwa

O Gloire, my brave girl,
Live for us who deserve death,
For being afraid to die.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA






 

BEING ON TIME

 

 

BEING ON TIME

When Time equals Being,
That would be the End.

Nothing would get past
The edges of ephemera.

What would the end be,
When Being equals Time?

There will not be a bang
Anywhere, nor a whimper.

There can only be trumpets
Of the winged proclaiming

An arrival in a regained
Haven where Death is dead;

At which time, no time
Marks being on time. Ever.

All will be late for the birth
Of God on Judgment Day.


---Albert B. Casuga

 

 

HIS STUDY

HIS STUDY


He said wallpapers in his study must be plain,
no flowers, trees, birds, or senseless curlicues
can match the birth-to-baptism-to-birthday
pictures that he prays would include weddings,
births, elf-looking poses of children and theirs,
grandchildren and theirs (he’d be a hundred),
framed and frozen in time, a collection of smiles
that would bind the Earth like a ribbon of glee
when knotted from-pursed-end to-toothy-end.

He said he will be the memento-keeper of long
remembrances, a Methuselah of happy times,
and he would not exchange his role for places
in havens of peace and quiet, he’d have laughter
and surprise squeals of romping lads and lasses,
infants once, gossoons and ingénues forever.

All his waking and sleeping hours are litanies
of joie de vivre: was that Marie on the turf?
How new, yet how knowing her whole-face
smile comes through like a burst of sunshine
that promises a long-drawn spring, a summer
of running across strawberry fields, jumping
into lily-mottled rivers. Was that Matthew
sprawled on the soccer green, his megawatt
grin saying: I’m okay, gramps, okay. Okay?
Was that Chloe in a princess’ veil? Did she
do that regal pirouette, and that wild bourree?
Was that Megan with her palette and canvas,
showing off a portrait of a once chubby Mikee?
Was that him needing help blowing his cake’s
Candles, and all ten grandchildren lending it?

Abandon all dread and heartbreak you who
enter this space, this paradise, his artlessly
scribbled sign on his door warned. This place,
this heart, this parlour of warmth and love,
this refuge. He looked at all his frames again,
reminded the renovator: No decor. Just plain.


---ALBERT B. CASUGA

OLD WOMEN IN VACANT LOTS

 

OLD WOMEN IN VACANT LOTS

 

(For the Children of Ishinomake)


Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;/ The worlds revolve like ancient women/ Gathering fuel in vacant lots.---T. S. Eliot, “Preludes”, Collected Poems 1909-1935

1.
Debris around the empty schoolhouse
have been cleared, gathered into motley
piles neatly lined on where the road was
before that too crumbled with village
life; only the old women stayed longer
than any of the taut-jawed rescuers now
back in cities where Ishinomaki is just a
dot in the grids pressed upon the brittle
maps. The temblor and the tsunami
are still everything to them: raw feelings,
ceaseless nightmares of weeping men
picking up limp bodies of children dug
out of the rubble, still tightly clutching
their shredded books and broken crayon.


2.
Their gnarled fingers and weary faces
stick out like bookmarks at the last light
of sundown, clipped between pages of rags
flapping in the uncertain weather, while
they move in little circles like crayfish
clambering over what remains of the yard
that once teemed with laughing children;
they would stop to talk over the muffled
rumble of the excavators, and bend quickly
to glean more rubbish or gather briefly
to touch and bless a tear from a blouse or
a piece from a muddied shirt they would
gently put away in their bamboo baskets.


3.
Other times, other seasons, they would
be here picking up ripped twigs dried
on the banks of the river at the foot of the
hill, fuel for the vats of the sweetened
yams they would boil to regale the boys
and girls gathered around them at school
break, laughing as raucously as the wee
urchins, while wiping their caramelled
lips with shawls they would wrap their
heads with when they walk down the hill,
to wait for another daybreak of fuel
picking, praying for a kinder season. Soon.


---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

ANOTHER WORLD

 

 

ANOTHER WORLD

1.
Where is the other world?
Why is it the other world?
Sounds like a spare tire,
doesn’t it? Don’t worry.
Blow your chances here,
and you will get another.
It is a quick visit anyway,
you would not regret it.
It is the ration store across
the abandoned churchyard.
You will even find an extra
heart there, when yours
turns callous and blind to
all that it was made for.

Was it for love? Don’t worry,
there’s an overstock of that
in the other world. That is
what is in that other world.

2.
Is that not what Good Friday
is all about? God took back
His son, and hoarded it there
in his unreachable warehouse,
beyond the magic of flowers
and the ardor of ardent caress,
because our vouchers would
not guarantee enough supply
just as it always ran out here,
when kindness and courage
were all we needed to protect
the world we know would take
us when no one wants to pick
us up from where we have fallen.

Where we have fallen, where
we could no longer get up from,
why not have another world
instead, then rest in peace at last?

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA