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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.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

VISIONS AND REVISIONS



Revising at dawn, amid the wreckage of beginnings, /you find it’s hard to remember how love looked /except beguiling, so absolutely sure of itself…. / You know how hard to look/at what’s unfinished; proclaim it beautiful or perfect, still.---From “Pantoum, with Spiderwebs and Raindrops” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-07-11


VISIONS AND REVISIONS


Endless visions and revisions
will follow every work of art,
its end is also its beginning. 

A cat straining to catch its tail
to earn its master’s delight?
But that’s not the metaphor. 

When the last image attaches
itself to a final web of moving
yet still pictures on a canvas, 

when the impasto of colours
have shaped the unuttered
angst trembling on the easel, 

when sounds have moulded
sense into a riot of language,
creation is done, work begins. 

Will the poem sing brightly?
Will the painting now speak?
When are they truly finished? 

He shaped a man out of clay
and thought him imperfect,
he needed her to be complete. 

How hard it must be for Him
to watch them destroy what
grows out of their love and loin. 

Yet he was proclaimed good
and perfect among the trees
and the mud dried out of Eden. 

How hurtful it must be for one
to start from the wreckage
of what began from ardent love.



---Albert B. Casuga
08-08-11


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