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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.

Monday, November 19, 2012

THE PASSION


 
 
THE PASSION

Love is most nearly itself/ When here and now cease to matter./ Old men ought to be explorers/ Here and there does not matter/ We must be still and still moving/ Into another intensity... T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”, Four Quartets

Too late to be afraid, I have left for places
to explore, posted my address “nowhere”
and there will be no returning. Not here. 

Not now, or anywhere. I have built me
caverns of love walled with sound, echoes
really, of cathedrals of thought and feeling 

neatly folded into my threadbare knapsack
of everything that is old and do not matter:
Only the love, barely the love, all the love. 

What is it? Where is it? How is it made?
How long will it last? Why call it a passion?
In that hill, on that rugged cross, it was. It is.

Where I shall go, I shall be asked: How long
did it take for you to know how to get home?
I always felt the tug, but never its intensity. 

---Albert B. Casuga

 

 

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