Monday, August 26, 2013

DANCE NOT ON THE GALLERY’S FLOOR

DANCE NOT ON THE GALLERY’S FLOOR

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
 

No one should linger in a gallery
To dance on its floor.
The Cardinal
Has spoken. The clockwork
Of deception has flung open
Its can of worms. Churchwords
Don’t always bear powers
Of ex cathedra. The cardinal is human.

Schoolboys care for ice cream and delicatessen
On their classes’ end
They do not read their books’ pages’ lines
Nor recite oral tests to their masterteacher.
School breaks are not school days.

Guerillas
Are trapped int eh underground.
They do fall
And they’ve fallen before
As before had their minds
Been preset to consume instinctively
Their warehouses’ rummaged goods:
The goods are dwindling and no more
Are these
What peoples
Notice, or wear, or prefer.

Let no one
find Christmas trees
on summertime
not on summertime!

And those songbirds from Siberia
They whose flights to the south
As winter approaches
Curiously add spices to the blowing winds
The wind drafts bear them nearer
To the equator
Where they merge with the life forms
Of the tropics
And then they’d go northward
When the icy days of their homeland dissipate
Into the blasts of warm breezes of summertime.
They only make flights upon
The summons of their wing carriers.

Even ants have trails
That are propagated by the aromatic
Odors oozed by their feet
Or the feet of their advanced seekers
In hot pursuit
Over sweet
Merchandise.

There are no sighs of relief
On painful moments
No mimicking of sufferings
On circumstances of heightened euphoria.

For sooner as the die is cast
It reads aloud the number registered
On its face. It settles
Gracefully on the flat panel board where
It landed with few rattles.

Cortes
The conquistador never epitomized the good
Nor the search for peace
The elusive end of existence.
Christ
Shan’t ever be remolded in a new image
To reappear as his own nemesis.

A glass that holds water
Will show the way to its utility
Drink the water
Drink to live

[Writ. 28 Sept. 1987, Univ. of the Philippines, QC.]



Tuesday, August 20, 2013

ON CRAFTING THE FUTURE

ON CRAFTING THE FUTURE

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

What is
the promising denouement
of aspirations for betterment
by all the Earth’s dispossessed
if not that
the fidelity
to the visions
they’ve conceived
can unfold
in their nonpassive
creation.

Yes, the future
has shapes and forms
that can be exquisitely
crafted.


[Writ. 27 Sept. 1987, University of the Philippines, QC.]

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

BANANAS

BANANAS

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Bananas
are benevolent
providers

of delight
for our tongue,

and fuels
for our body;

they too
can be

the measures
of terror

sowed
by perpetrators

of naked power
in tropical princedoms.

[Writ. 27 Sept., 1987, University of the Philippines, QC.]



Tuesday, August 6, 2013

REFLECTIONS ABOUT WORK

REFLECTIONS ABOUT WORK

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


There can be
no savoring the foods
offered by Terra
without working hard for their generation;

no consumption of bounties
in torrential showers
without striving
for their production;

no recital of flowery
words about justice
without active contention
for their fruition;

no pleasant rest
of mind and body
without processing by
the sweatshops of labour;

no blissful state
of realized utopias
without rendering sufferings
from waylaid obstacles.

[Writ. 27 Sept, 1987, University of the Philippines, QC.]