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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.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

REWRITING A COVENANT





MY POEM TODAY is prompted by the series I have embarked on ----The Great Grief---to provide information on the dread of losing our world to the threat of extinction which scientists say has already started. With this poem, I re-establish an old friendship with a San Beda student, Daniel Javier Javier, an artist in his own right and a member of the popular singing group "The Apo Hiking Society."


REWRITING A COVENANT
(For Daniel Javier of The Apo Hiking Society) *


“You have your paintbrush and colors. Paint Paradise, and in you go.”---Nikos Kazantzakis


It would have to be a clear canvas, and all the walls a limitless
expanse of nothing. Yet. My easel could turn or slide in all
possible directions, my palette a saucer of rainbows.


These are my terms before I end up in a heaven or hell
not of my own making: that I would be a child again,
wild again, unbridled in conjuring my own quaint realities 

 
where realities match quicksilver dreams that shape
and reshape themselves however I fancy them; that I
would be free of the shackles of meaning or the ghosts 

 
of language as their intolerable gaolers in dungeons
where there are no keys nor clanging cell doors to open;
that I would have all the sunrises and all the sunsets


under my control, and all the days of my life kept neatly
folded in drawers I could open and reopen for change
when I itch from sticky underwear and not have to curse 

 
the padlocked building laundromat; that I would be free
at last to work at a burgeoning poem or a canvas whenever
I start one and not be constipated to leave it unfinished 

 
because days would not be long enough, word processors
not fast enough for my careening thoughts that must see
their tail and catch it while running to fill all empty vases 

 
of lives and loves as meaning of what meanings would
have been if my life meant anything at all. But does it?
Paint your paradise, I am told, and in you go. But I can’t.



---Albert B. Casuga

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