AUTUMN’S QUESTION
Why do we exist? Why is there something rather than nothing?
- The question of the Ages.
Someone, something, put one over the graffiti Pollocks today:
there’s paint all over the cobbled boulevard, a chiaroscuro
of foliage, a mayhem of hue cutting through dreary treetops,
an assault on the bleakness of a clean well-lighted street,
a rampage of glee gone berserk on a roiled canvas of forest
awash with windswept strokes running riot along walls
of maples and birches and whimpering willows, a cul de sac’s
Sistine vault, Klee’s templegarten, Monet’s pond, aieee.
This fullness of surprise is still our constant wonderment:
what does this arboreal splendour, this arbour’s magic,
change sylvan verdance for? Why the circus of colours
before autumn’s chill crinkles leaves to brittle brown, black,
or even nothing? What temples rise from the deluge of shades,
what language of grandeur echo in these ancient retreats?
Or what language of absence befuddles before this death
that crumples something to nothing? This fall, we ask again:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Something, someone, did one over the city’s graffiti lads today:
someone has painted the rainbow on small palms of leaves.
HAIKUS ON TWIGS
Autumn -/ even the birds/ and clouds look old.
- Basho
1.
Autumn leaves leave twigs
When wild fall winds shear branches
Of their brittle foliage.
2.
Twigs cast thin shadows---
Like trembling fingers, clutch air
For their treetop tuck.
3.
They cannot hold on---
Twigs must break away like sons
Preening as oak trees.
4.
Twigs cracked by wild wind
Fall pell-mell on bristly grass,
Burn as quickly too
When fierce sunrays turn
Valleys to tittering flame:
A covenant with spring.
5.
When twigs break away,
Shorn saplings do not take them
Back as prodigal branches
Like shadows swallowed
By sunsets gone past mountains
Lost to murky nights.
6.
O, we are fallen twigs
And will not be back this way again
Though wild winds lift us.
ALBERT B. CASUGA was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. He won the national Philippine Parnaso Poetry Contest in the '70s, and first prizes in the Mississauga-Canada Library Systems Literary Contests in 1990 (for Fiction), 1996 (for Poetry), and 1998 (for Poetry). His works have appeared in the Philippines Free Press, Graphic Weekly Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine (Maryland), Philippine Writing (edited by the late NVM Gonzalez), A Habit of Shores (UP Press, ed. Gemino H. Abad), among many others. He publishes a literary blog at http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com.
Why do we exist? Why is there something rather than nothing?
- The question of the Ages.
Someone, something, put one over the graffiti Pollocks today:
there’s paint all over the cobbled boulevard, a chiaroscuro
of foliage, a mayhem of hue cutting through dreary treetops,
an assault on the bleakness of a clean well-lighted street,
a rampage of glee gone berserk on a roiled canvas of forest
awash with windswept strokes running riot along walls
of maples and birches and whimpering willows, a cul de sac’s
Sistine vault, Klee’s templegarten, Monet’s pond, aieee.
This fullness of surprise is still our constant wonderment:
what does this arboreal splendour, this arbour’s magic,
change sylvan verdance for? Why the circus of colours
before autumn’s chill crinkles leaves to brittle brown, black,
or even nothing? What temples rise from the deluge of shades,
what language of grandeur echo in these ancient retreats?
Or what language of absence befuddles before this death
that crumples something to nothing? This fall, we ask again:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Something, someone, did one over the city’s graffiti lads today:
someone has painted the rainbow on small palms of leaves.
HAIKUS ON TWIGS
Autumn -/ even the birds/ and clouds look old.
- Basho
1.
Autumn leaves leave twigs
When wild fall winds shear branches
Of their brittle foliage.
2.
Twigs cast thin shadows---
Like trembling fingers, clutch air
For their treetop tuck.
3.
They cannot hold on---
Twigs must break away like sons
Preening as oak trees.
4.
Twigs cracked by wild wind
Fall pell-mell on bristly grass,
Burn as quickly too
When fierce sunrays turn
Valleys to tittering flame:
A covenant with spring.
5.
When twigs break away,
Shorn saplings do not take them
Back as prodigal branches
Like shadows swallowed
By sunsets gone past mountains
Lost to murky nights.
6.
O, we are fallen twigs
And will not be back this way again
Though wild winds lift us.
ALBERT B. CASUGA was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. He won the national Philippine Parnaso Poetry Contest in the '70s, and first prizes in the Mississauga-Canada Library Systems Literary Contests in 1990 (for Fiction), 1996 (for Poetry), and 1998 (for Poetry). His works have appeared in the Philippines Free Press, Graphic Weekly Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine (Maryland), Philippine Writing (edited by the late NVM Gonzalez), A Habit of Shores (UP Press, ed. Gemino H. Abad), among many others. He publishes a literary blog at http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com.
