A COUNTERPOISE

 

A COUNTERPOISE

 

How much of this is punishment?

Where is the jewel wrapped in stone?

Would my Sisyphus escape Tartarian

Tedium, rolling itself to a boulder

Of sin, of fear and endless trembling?

There was another stone rolled away,

From a cave that could not bury love

Even as it was nailed to die on a tree. 

Which rock would I now cleave to?

Which promise? How many times

Must I roll downhill with this burden?

Why should I fall with his craven cross?

Is the absence of choice a birthright?

Or is it the fearsome fate of being alive?

On sundowns like this, I will not break

My silence, nor weep to beg for light. 

Without a whimper, without regret,

I will take my rock uphill or downhill,

Pare it until it becomes the river pebble

That must one day crack downstream

Like a wounded oyster birthing a pearl

From the dirt of an abandoned quarry,

Like this place, this injured home,

This Earth, this leftover dungeon of fear.  

On the death of days like this, I kneel

Before a cliff that can only take me down.

Like the tedium of sunrises and sunsets,

I steel myself into a still point of hope.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA