SABADO DE GLORIA: THIS TOMB IS A WOMB
"What misery to be afraid of death./ What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven."---Mary Oliver
He chafed at the two-and-a-half-hour service,
And at night yet: a vigil, the pastor called it.
Why a vigil? Who are we losing early sleep
Over? You should not have come to church
This evening with a sour heretic’s spleen.
You put the heathens to shame, his spouse
Now sounding like his shadow-self, would
Most certainly scold him if he dared protest.
Why this vigil? We have lived with this truth
For centuries now. Why behave like we have
To prove that He prevailed over crucifixion
Unto death? That grave stone moved during
The centurion’s watch? Not even his twelve
Comrades could do that. This tomb is a womb.
What in the name of the saints did you say?
His wife would madly bellow. A womb tomb?
But he would sheepishly answer: Am poetic.
I mean all types of dying or death entombed,
But this was the true womb of life and living.
In this cave, all the world’s hideous hate died
So that it may become the womb of a Rock,
Of enduring love, against whose ramparts no
Malice, mayhem, nor vicious evil shall ever
Prevail. She said: they do rhyme, don’t they?
---Albert B. Casuga
04-08-13
Commenting on the above poem, Philippine poet Rita B. Gadi quoted from some of her prayer-poems in her "Prayers for the Present. She posted it in my My Facebook Notes, 04-08.
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It seems not enough
to have hurt You once
in Calvary.
Each day I repeat
the rending of Your heart
quenching Your thirst with acid,
rolling the dice
for the price of Your robe
the glint of instant gain
twirling in my palms,
LORD, HAVE MERCY!
Please take me back
pressed inside the smallest
particle of space
between
the wooden sliver and Your skin
my holiest intimacy
with Your enormous grief,
LORD, I AM NOT WORTHY!
---RITA B. GADI
From her “Prayers for the Present”