My photo
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.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

A CODE OF SILENCE



A CODE OF SILENCE 



Let yourself down/with knotted bedsheets, gingerly, /through what used to pass for moonlight/in the age of aluminum. --- From “Sleeper Cell” by Dave Bonta, Via Negativa, 09-05-11 



Who will tell you, or know what to tell you,
what you have been pieced together for?
 

Were you not made to wait for that one call?
Words, numbers, cannot be trusted. Silence.
 

That would be your only language. Muted. Wait
in resigned silence, like the alloyed moonlight
 

slipping past your silken bivouac into another
night of waiting for a Silence on the sheets.
 

No one is on this, no codes to break were made;
nothing works except silence, suppliant/defiant. 

When your call comes, pray do not use the door,
but climb down your cell from your window sill,
 

clambering down clutching knotted sheets, like
the cat thief descending on an airborne carpet.
 

Against the obscured cookie moon, your shadow
disappears. This time, keep your grave’s silence.
 



—Albert B. Casuga
09-06-11


No comments: