SONGS FOR THE FIRSTBORN

 

 

SONGS FOR THE FIRSTBORN*

(For Jing-jing, on her Birthday)

 

All the piper has is a bag of music and a pack of metaphors. ---From In a Sparrow’s Time, 1990

 

1.

These broken smiles,

these cracked laughter

 

 

(O dear tender, dear

gentle, dear child)

 

You have become my little

mermaid, restless in your lair;

 

and I, the Sire’s shadow staid

on a creaking broken chair,

 

sprouting stems, rotting grass,

shooting blossoms dying on an ear.

 

Youth sprouts from sudden fear

in the bright grip of the city.

2.

Now, almost half a century

into your life of hurts and pains,

and triumphs, too, you survive

on little drops of scarce caresses,

 

(torrents of struggle being now

your day’s staple) and never flinch

even when living becomes a sting

of madness---and you, no longer

 

the wee mermaid but a queen

of steel resolve, are now inured

to the thrust and parry of being

alive in a world not solely of your

 

making. But you grin and bear it,

like you have always borne

this helter-skelter world, a pioneer

daughter, who dashed from child

 

to woman, a lover, a handholder,

a rock upon whose shoulders we

can now cry on. But never in fear.

Not in the bright grip of the city.

---Albert B. Casuga

 

 

 

*For my firstborn, Angeli Francoise Casuga, who celebrates her birthday today.