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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.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

ECHOES



ECHOES

All is disposable,/ except for that which/ persists. The echo/ unhinged from/ the sound that/ threw it. ---Hannah Stephenson, “Aftermath”, The Storialist, 11-28-11



1. 

How far will an echo go
before it peters out to
leave its source’s halloo
sounding thin and hollow? 

How long will this echo
last in hallways that throw
peels of joy that follow
a escape from deep sorrow? 

Is it a will-o-the-wisp, too,
much like the brief flow
of warm breeze over snow
that won’t melt nor thaw? 

Everything here must go.
All is disposable. But echo
that ripples here through
time is an eternity or so. 

Am I not after all a shadow
of that maker of a rainbow,
who sent a dove not a crow
to fly from that ship’s bow? 

Am I not truly God’s echo? 

2.   

Echoes shape corridors lean
leaving them a cipher’s silence
not unlike the axiom of a day: 

All things go up to fall the way
fractured birdwings fall, violence
met in the loins of wind. 

Lean corridors shape echoes,
silence ciphering them, leaving
a day axiomed as not what is unlike  

the way the fall of things strike:
violence on the fractured birdwing,
winds loyned with zodiaqual zeroes.* 

 3.  

O THAT A FALL MUST GO
GO MUST A FALL THAT O
THE WAY A COMET’S TAIL
TAIL A COMET’S WAY...



---Albert B. Casuga
11-30-11



*Loyned – being the sound of echoed “loined”; zodiaqual, is “zodiacal” (from arcane to new).

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