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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.

Friday, August 18, 2017

BEING PROUD OF HER

  1. BEING PROUD OF HER*
  2. (For Mimi, Blanca and Ding+ Nolledo


  5. Let me at it---get me to my concupiscibles....
    Green. Ripples. Sidled boats. Verdant growth.
    Do you not see the metaphor stripped bare
    Of all that is recondite? Lorca saw it: Verde.
    Old Nick’s barking tremolo swooned to it—
    Evensong lullaby hushed his beer-body riot.
    “Shh…the quiet lord cometh, he is on his way,
    Laving ripples murmur to the brackish rocks
    Serving sentry on the bluff: it is the end of day,
    One more goodbye, one more sleep. No cocks
    Crow here anymore.” Mimi has a good eye.

  1. Do you not feel what you ought to also see?
    The idled empty boats are Indios Bravos tables.
    Our tippling comrades are not there anymore,
    Like the gin-ran pumps of absent boatmen,
    These tubs tug at loose ropes linking them
    Briefly like tumbler-toasting, tired, trolling
    Troubadours. Beyond, it will always be green;
    The gentle whimsy of wind is caressing here.
    But the lights will be turned down soon,
    Like sundown’s stealth, the creeping gloom.

  1. At the old haunt—Nick, Pete, Pascua-Sanchez,
    Papen, Erwin, Recah, Blanca, Adrian, Cuadra,
    Are still shadows on the wall, not unlike catfish
    Bobbing up for air as we did, drunken Bravos,
    Fighting for breath when carousing left us
    Struggling to surface from the depths of dives
    Into bottomless pain and puzzlement: why
    Did we have to walk out, foglike, into a dawn
    Where bright days turned us all into harlequins
    Miming what we thought were loud promises
    to stay alive like these green dancing ripples
    moving my eyes now grafted into Mimi’s Eye.

  1. ---ALBERT B. CASUGA
    Mississauga, 07-07-13


  3. *A poem written in the persona of the late Philippine writer and novelist non pareil Wilfrido D. “Ding” Nolledo, father of artist Melissa Nolledo, and beloved husband of writer-editor Blanca Datuin-Nolledo, who writes a blog “Cropsharing in the Bounty of Love” where she collects hitherto unknown remembrances of one of the finest writers in English in the Philippines, “But for the Lovers” author, Wilfrido Nolledo.

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