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.]
