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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, December 10, 2012

THIS FIRE MUST BURN: A CHRISTMAS POEM


 
 
THIS FIRE MUST BURN: A CHRISTMAS POEM
 

No light shines that is not itself a road/ No other door opens except in dreams.---From “In Dreams” by Simeon Dumdum, Jr.

 

This fire must burn fiercely to build the road
that ends at the foundling’s darkened cavern.  

Blind eyes will discover how only hearts can
find where the flame has been lit to crackle  

through endless nights of endless dreaming
for an advent that is also the final leaving:  

How long will this journey take to open doors
that will take him in? Why are they all closed?  

A peasant woman and her bewildered lover,
huddle around a trough of dampened feed,  

and cannot hear their fears drowned by hope
that their wildest nightmare of an unborn  

child would be a prince of peace whose light
is all he could offer the wounded and the poor.  

For these afflicted, the light will all be roads,
to his kingdom where dreams are also doors  

to a bountiful garden carved from twin hills
of birth and crucifixion. Bethlehem is Calvary.  

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA
 
 

 

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