POEMS AS ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS

POEMS AS ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS

By Albert B. Casuga

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS 1: WHAT IS IT ALL FOR?

 

I am exploring poetic answers to the BIG QUESTIONS.  (Cosmological, Philosophical.) Stuart Clark listed down questions on The Universe in his Big Questions book, and Simon Blackburn his list in The Big Questions: Philosophy. Our first question is from Blackburn: WHAT IS IT (Life) ALL FOR?

 

IN SEARCH OF MEANINGS

 

Missing the many splendored thing

is one way of looking at this search.
How really far out there do we need
to fly, or espy for the god particle we
seemed to have lost in the process?

Why look behind the stars or in them?

Did we not lose our angels coming off
the crib or the direst cranny for shelter?
They do not grow with us, nor guide us.
Absconding, they quietly creep away.

Courage and devilment open our eyes

what stories we could live with or by,
or what places to board up or occupy.
Orphans at birth, we are alone at death.
What we mean here is what we make.
 

The womb is a meaning we cannot do

without: our final breath is a call:
Mother, hold me. Our first cry is a call:
Mother, love me. And then we grow old
shaping up all excess purposes and ends.

 

The tomb is yet another meaning we

scarcely begin to understand before it
pulls us to its urgent demand: living
to die trying to live while dying is easy
may yet be the meaning we struggle for.
 

BIG QUESTION 2: CAN WE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER?*

 

 

YOU AND I

 

Words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. ---John Locke

 

Are you talking to me? Are you writing to me?

Answers to questions you pitch into the dark
are meanings I assign to the questions you ask.
 

Always, you and I, will be at opposite ends

of a half-lit hallway where echoes are as urgent
as the tremulous confessions we burden ourselves
 

with each time we look into our reflections

on one-way mirrors we look into when hiding
hurts hurled like hunting knives at target trees.

When I call you, I mean to quickly hold you down,

to find your voice, to shape your feelings, to own
your thoughts, to mould you as I want to have you.
 

I interpret you through my own lenses and mirror

you as you would me and have our confluence
in this reflection, a dragging into a cold dungeon
 

of thought constructing meaning instead of finding

it, and the “You” becomes the “I” held in bondage.
Except that in this conquest, I lose everything.

Questions and answers become elusive phantoms
of meaning, configurations of troth to the other
turn into fantasy, dreams and desire but delusions.
 

*This poem was prompted by Simon Blackburn's "Can We Understand Each Other? Treating Words Carefully," The Big Questions: Philosophy, Quercus Publishing, London, UK, 2009

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS 3: BETWEEN HERE AND THERE

 

 

 

BETWEEN HERE AND THERE

 

A poverty of language requires reading

between the lines: the eyes cannot see,

nor scents mean anything. No taste

or touch could jump out of nothing.

A trick, if there is one, is that meaning
cannot mean beyond the compulsions
of a body made for this time only.

Does one learn to understand a heart’s
diction? What words leap out of silence?
Why does one need to listen to whispers
of absence? Why do sounds of sorrow
and madness register the same timbre
where indifference is the sounding board?
Is this why we would rather tolerate poets?

They read and write between the lines,
and could not care less about the simple,
palpable grip of certainty bereft of clarity.
What is clearness if the whole truth hides
behind the unknown here and a dark there?

If meaning could not be found in one place,
here, why do we think we really understand?

Between the lines, we may yet begin to know
that we need to go there to be truly here.


In response to the Big Question: What is Human Nature (The Problem of Interpretation) by Simon Blackburn, The Big Questions: Philosophy, Quercus Publishing Plc, London, UK, pg. 18 etseq.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS 4: A ZERO POINT

"Is Death To Be Feared?": One of the Big Questions included by Simon Blackburn in his The Big Questions: Philosophy. Here is my take for an answer.

 

 

A ZERO POINT

 

He said it first: after this death,

there is no other. It is peremptory.

But a world without a memory,

is as final as it can get without you.

Will it be a place where love is free?

Magical, except you can’t come back.

The pictures will be on the walls,

as mute as the hooks they hang on.

They will not talk to you, they can’t.

Even if they could, they would not.

Even if you have become the cobweb

wrapped tight on the broken frames,

you would not have been there. No.

You are not part of the furniture.

Like dust in abandoned houses, you

will inhabit the nooks and crannies,

and would not be disturbed until

termites take over. Too late then,

because you are not even a remnant

of temps perdu, you are lost in time

and in space; even among the stars

and black holes, you are not there.

Like the sound of a single hand

clapping, you will not be heard.

The first death is always the last.

THE BIG QUESTIONS 5: CHOOSING CHAOS

Here is my poem-a-day answer to one of the Big Questions posited by Simon Blackburn in his "Am I Free? (Choices and Responsibility)

CHOOSING CHAOS

Order is articulated chaos, its desire

an old rebellion that recalls the loss
of a streamlined paradise. Nothing
is needed here. Everything is given.

Then, why walk out of this Garden?

A provident Eden where everything
grew including his wanton dreams,
of having his way: orders be damned.

How simple things would have been.

Each pebble on the pond had a reason
to be there, each star a constellation
of sunlight, each sun a starter of life.

How serenely flowers would bloom
on the tip of thorns, or water flow
gently from the cracks of dry rocks,
and ripe fruit fall into open mouths.

Everything can happen here, nothing

Is everything there, a cipher is full.
How benignly would mountains rise
from the sea, and lakes from mudpools.
 

Would movement have moved this

conspiracy of stillness and creation?
He could not see this, nor feel the pain
of a yanked rib to make a woman cane.

A yearning rooted in his belly burned,

a lust for roaming the hidden valleys,
finding struggle with fish and grain
a surprising tug on his arms and loins.

Walking out on a promise of fullness

and unbridled abundance, did he
choose somehow to stand on hind legs
and see whence came the thunderous

offer? You who are made in my image,

shall have dominion over all that you
see and taste, all that is still or moves,
or none but the courage to choose.

He chose to shape his own order out

of the unseen chaos of growth he
occupied East of Eden, and decided:
We will gather ourselves some fig leaves.

We will make ourselves our own image.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 6: MEANING AS AXIOM

 

 Here's a poetic response to the Big Question: Why is There Something and Not Nothing? (The Strange Ways of Being)*

 

MEANING AS AXIOM

If another twig falls in the night,
as silently as it grew as a sapling
toward the sky, would that mean
anything anyway to anyone?

The graveyard of a fallen tree
may tell untold stories that stay
untold until a struggling stray root
breaks through dry rot and ground
for yet another flushed cherry tree.

The inexorable is also axiom here:
life begins in death in a spun gyre
twirling into flowers, forever moving.

 

Nothing is everything here, but there
where leaves had once fallen, broken
twigs spring back as fluttering birds
twittering on branches like new leaves.

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 8: BEING ON TIME (DOES TIME GO BY? THE STRANGE RIVER OF TIME)

 

Painting by Salvador Dali

BEING ON TIME

When Time equals Being,
That would be the End.

Nothing would get past
The edges of ephemera.

What would the end be,
When Being equals Time?

There will not be a bang
Anywhere, nor a whimper.

There can only be trumpets
Of the winged proclaiming

An arrival in a regained
Haven where Death is dead;

At which time, no time
Marks being on time. Ever.

All will be late for the birth
Of God on Judgment Day.

A response to one of the Big Questions posed by Simon Blackburn in his The Big Questions: Philosophy essay on Time and Being, "Does Time Go By? The Strange River of Time." (pp.115-123), Quercus Publishing Plc, 2009, London UK.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 9: CHANGES (PROBLEMS OF CONSTANCY AND CHAOS)

Why are things in constant flux? Why do times change and we with them? Everything is relative then? Relative to what? Are you here or are you there? As Blackburn asks: why do things keep on keeping on? Is Eternity in another life a myth? A placebo? Another world? Why struggle then for Eternity?
 

CHANGES

 

O, the times a-changin’…Times change, an’ we change with them!

 

Changes, as constant as they are intriguing,

slither through as coldly as serpents move
into crevices not unlike meandering fog.
 

Inexorable patterns, they are the unchanging

streams running through the cherished fables
we tell and retell until they become a reality

we cannot escape however sanguinely we try

to build walls to ward them off chambers
of fear housing our hapless lives. Hopeless.

Every sunrise fades into a sundown, all lives

dwindle with discarded days, anguish turns
into ecstasy and loops around like a storm.
 

What grows in spring withers in summer,

then, like twigs blown off in autumn’s fall,
get buried in winter frost, a carrion of a year.
 

Why struggle then for eternity? Nothing lasts.

That story about a lost paradise is still grit
for an unchanging story once upon a time.

Could changes have been that fruit in Eden?

An apple stuck in his throat, it bobs forever
like an intruding promise that everything

must perish even in paradise. The rot here

then is forever. Flotsam of ruined homes,
debris of broken lives, all tombs of betrayal.

Would a morning ever come, as we sip tea,

when like a wave laving the shore, it ebbs
only to crawl back at all sunrises and sunsets,
never ceasing, never leaving, never changing?

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 10: LITTLE QUESTIONS? (WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS IN A SOCIETY? IS THERE SUCH A THING AS SOCIETY? AM I FREE?

LITTLE QUESTIONS?

 

Is there such a thing as Society? What are my Rights? Am I free? ---Simon Blackburn, The Big Questions, Philosophy*

  

There must be a little door

that will not end in a room.
Space is all. Is there an end
to these rooms? An exit
into a free space all my own?
 

I require a room-less door

to step out of when leaving
would finally mean being
unbound, no walls to fence me
in, no house to shackle a home.
 

For what would a sky be for?

Why would suns set over hills?
Suns rise from the edge of seas?
Why do springs expand to falls?
Why is beauty is own excuse?

 

Whence comes this splendour,

what does it mean for a flower
to bloom? When all questions
have been answered, where
ends he whose end is a question?

Or are answers simply next door?

 

*Simon Blackburn, The Big Questions, Philosophy, "Am I Free? (Choices and Responsibility)?". pp. 28 etseq., "Is There Such a Thing as Society? (The individual and the group), pp. 66 etseq.. Quercus Publishing Plc, London, UK, 2009.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 11: HIS WAILING WALL (IS THERE A NEED FOR GOD? WHY IS THERE A NEED TO BE GOOD?)

 

HIS WAILING WALL

 

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant --- Tacitus*

 

Either way, distance finds me

looking up or down this cliff,
an unlikely sanctuary I escape
into aching for scarce solitude.

How can one be alone among

the darting seagulls? Or silent
with lost memories jarred by
blasts of breaking waves below?

Here, gods revel in their haven

of whistling winds and clouds,
down there fishermen cackle,
chewing sargasso, guzzling gin,
 

while their thrown nets fill up

with flotsam floating around
moss-gowned boulders staring
at the sky like dark green eyes.

Is it this vast and empty space

between that scares me now,
when I should be murmuring
secrets to messenger winds?

I would scream unbearable

pain, holler down bitter anger;
I must share muffled grief,
loosen taut shackles of despair.

Either way, I find wailing walls
in air, water, rocks, and wind;
like Job I weep for peace, hope
to gently fall in the cup of palms

waiting to catch my carrion

now carved out of a shattered
world of faithlessness and fear,
unable to hold on to life or love.

On this piece of jutting rock,

have I not found the little place
where I could reach His Hand
quickly were I to fall, either way?

 

Simon Blackburn is a philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge in England. His essays "Why Be Good?" (pp. 94 etseq) and "Do We Need God?" (pp. 159 etseq), are included in the The Big Questions, Philosophy, 2009, Quercus Publishing Plc, London, UK.

  

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 12: TRANSFIGURATIONS: IS BEAUTY AN OMEN? (WHAT IS BEAUTY? WHAT IS IT FOR? IS IT AN INTIMATION OF IMMORTALITY?)

TRANSFIGURATIONS: IS BEAUTY AN OMEN?


A condition of complete simplicity/ (Costing not less than everything)---Little Gidding, The Four Quartets, T.S.Eliot


Cocooned in a condition of utter simplicity,
the silkworm will not stop oozing out its tapestry
onto the point of death which is also its beauty.

How much beauty can be eked out of pain?
Like the hurt bivalved flesh of the grimy oyster,
would the papillon wings glisten like a pearl?

But this one is spun out of patience: there
must be radiance out of a cocoon’s dark
confines. It can only break into mobile light.

Colour the mariposa green, would that matter?
Dye the silk out of its consumed gossamer nets,
would that stop its flying out of a crude beginning?

Arrested from its final transfiguration, the worm
turns and it is on a table–the grub of culinary
quintessence! Quite like an earlier challenge:

“Eat of my flesh, drink of my blood. This covenant
shall not be broken. I will be with you again when
the radiance of this goblet dims into a eucharist.”

A condition of simplicity? Bear beauty and perish?
Offer an unending dream in a kingdom, and be slain?
The tale of the supreme sacrifice is also immolation.

What does it matter that I die then, if I flew out
of a trellis like the monarch butterfly, that started
as a wormed-out silkworm then food for the hungry?

I would be the worm, the injured mother pearl,
the crucified madman who asked that his flesh
be eaten, his blood quaffed, and live forever.

Beauty is an omen. Destroy this vessel of clay,
and it can only spill the reddest of wine, the
stoutest of ale: a dangerous promise of eternal life.

Ref.: The Big Questions, Philosophy by Simon Blackburn, "What is Beauty? (The fatal attraction of things.), pp 150 etseq., 2009, Quercus Publishing Plc., London, UK.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 13: OCCUPYING THE GARDEN: A HUNGER (WHAT IF I WAS MADE FOR THE OTHER? WHAT DO I NEED? AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? AM I DECEIVING MYSELF?)

 

OCCUPYING THE GARDEN: A HUNGER

 

What do I want, what do I need? Later, I tell myself, later. There’s plenty of work, the hours full of obligation. But I know I am not virtuous: I am always my hunger. ---From “Hunger” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa

 

 

What if this place were made only for the other?

You are yourself, but you are also others’ other.

Were you conceived for yourself, or for a specie?

Someone must extend the process of evolution.

Your first act out of the womb was to let out a cry.

Was it not to alert the birthing other you’re here?

And you will bring joy to a union forged in dreams,

but you could always be the unwanted obligation.

What if you were the inevitable happenstance
come from the aches of groin and gravid reasons?

Are you an issue of love or lust? An afterthought?

When did you start to even aspire to be yourself?

Dare you grow then to even ask: What do I want?

What do I need? Selfish angst? No. Must-ask ones.

One cannot give what one does not have, operatio

sequitur esse. Find and feed your hunger to know

what you are here for. Are you a brother’s keeper?

Or does a lover keep you? Either way, a hunger.

If you were for the other, you must be provident;

but fill your tills first before giving a ruddy cent.

Is your neighbour the village thief? Love him.

Clothe the naked, as you would with a fig leaf.

Before long, you would have guessed how little

you are without the other, and learn to whistle

in the dark, and wait, and build, and gather

behind walls, until, one on top of the other,

you begin to climb beyond your pauper space

to occupy a lost garden, a haven, as your place.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 14: GETTING BLANK BACK ( AM I FREE TO MAKE A MESS OF MY LIFE? WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?)

GETTING BLANK BACK


How efficiently convenient it would have been
if we were born with erasers in both hands:
ones which could quickly rub out anything
irrelevant or inutile to a life made in the stars.

Would one miss the struggle that colours days?
Would one etch a restful stroll under the palms?
How easily could a hammock be hung on walls
when weary of a senseless shift of acts, and rest?

The start and stress of little lives is enough
to wish for all-purpose equipment to work life
out just as we want it. Aren’t we our own masters?
Why let others outside mould our lives inside?

Are we not free to sculpt our haunches, paint our
portraits, pare our own earthen jars, exist as us
regardless of them? Why not use those erasers
to blank out every misstep, every dread, and live?

How conveniently efficient it would have been
had we been able to erase the ineffectual lines
that make us shadows instead of bright forms
exact on the blank sheet we were made to draw on.


* Inspired by a poem, "Removed, " written by Columbus, Ohio poet Hannah Stephenson published in her poetry blog, The Storialist.

Erasing is not/not drawing,/ just moving/ around what/ you think you/ didn’t mean..../ We can’t get/ blank back,/ just as good as/new but not/ the same as/ before you drew.---From “Removed” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 06-19-12

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 15: QUESTIONS---NOW AND THEN. WHY BOTHER ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS, WHEN THEY COULD NOT BE ANSWERED NOW? 

As an interregnum, this poem should bring the reader back to what the series was all about---the task of man as a homo sapiens is to ask questions while he is around, because his effort to answer them also defines whether or not his existence is meaningful, as transient as it is while it lasts. Why bother to ask these questions, when they could not be answered now.

 

 

1.
What good is a brilliant question,
If it could not be answered now?
Of what use is an inchoate answer,
That begs the essential question?

It is the cat catching its tail, a snake
Swallowing itself, it is the circle
That will not break, a spinning gyre
Spitting back unanswered riddles.

Is not time past after all the now
We worry an answer for? Is it time
To be anxious for, when tomorrow
Has not gone past the hurdle Now?

A condemnation by circuit pulses,
Is always an unanswered curse.

2.
That is precisely the imprecision
That presides over the fate of man
Who must answer for a finitude
He did not want nor grovelled for.

Why must time past be time future,
When there is no now save a passing
Passion for all that looks beautiful
For just a little while, a vanishing
Vision---a grand mansion of thought,
A perishing still point, a broken
Promise of eternity he cannot know,
Nor understand for its briefness?

He will ask all the bright questions,
But they cannot be answered now.

* This poem was inspired by a post by Ohio poet Hannah Stephenson. "How do we know/ what now is /if it’s always passing/ through us/ before we can get a good/ grip on it. ---From “What Do You Have in That Headlock”, Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist


THE BIG QUESTIONS, 16: ODDS: WHY LOVE THEN OR LIVE AT ALL? HOW TRUE IS OUR EXPLORING?

 

Why love then or live at all? How true is our exploring? How certain is this mock-up for staying alive?

 

THE ODDS: HOW TRUE IS OUR EXPLORING?

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business/ ...Love is most nearly itself/ Where here and now cease to matter./ Old men ought to be explorers/ Here and there does not matter/ We must be still and still moving/ Into another intensity...From “East Coker, The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

 

Because we could not hold on to love
As it must be held, given pure and free,
We can only try to find what is most
Nearly itself, until we get to a still point.

Time does not define where that may be,
But it must linger in the mother’s breasts,
When she suckles her infant into a life
Where there is nothing but uncertainty.

How precariously certain is this mock-up
Of staying alive when it is impermanence
That most resembles it? A will-o’-the-wisp
Or a cruel mirage hounds us, it is there

But not here. Why love then, or live at all?
When uncertain weather is most certain,
Why dare fritter precious lifetime on this
Uncharted clearing? It is our yoke to try.

We will perish trying, measure dying by
How true our exploring must be, we
Cannot stop, we simply move into another
Space, with flaming eagerness or anger.

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 17: STAYING ALIVE EVEN IF WE DID NOT PLAN TO BE BORN---A JOIE D'VIVRE

What does it mean to Stay Alive? Even if one did not plan to be born, why is it preferable to make a go of living it up with elan and joie d'vivre?

 

 

 

STAYING ALIVE---A JOIE D'VIVRE

 

Because what we now have is a life

we will never have again, something
as unrepeatable as living or dying,
we drink to it as often as we turn down
an empty cup, and learn to forgive
what was given or not, noblese oblige,
coming as we do to this strange place
without as much as a warning or even
our consent. We did not know.
 
Because we did not plan to be born,
is it too vexing to learn--perhaps
to revel in--the myriad acts of loving,
of living, and in return be grateful
to perform the surprisingly magical art
of shaping life, nurturing it, finding it
where no one would lead us, blind
as we are to this fire in our weak loins?
 

Was that left behind by a rushed maker,

like a spare screw, and we had to find
where it would fit snugly, divinely apt
and delicately, deliciously, our manner
of staying alive when dying is better?

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 18: LESSONS ON THE LEAP OF FAITH. (WHY AND HOW CAN ONE BELIEVE? WHY BELIEVE IN LIFE, LOVE, LETTING GO?)

Why and when must one make his leap of faith, or not at all?

 

LESSONS ON THE LEAP OF FAITH

When the torch of desire burns clean
you would have learned all there is to learn:

To give, Datta. To feel and care, Dayadhvam.
To own and control, Damyata.Therefore,

To love beyond all loving because it is pure
like the mother suckles her infant. Give.

To know when caring will make things grow
like the raindrops nourish but will not sting.

To have and to hold even when that lashes
irreducible hurts to weary hearts that care.

It is for this that, naked, we halloo in the rain,
Let it come! Let all desires fill our dry vessels.

Then we wake to the warm caress of the Sun
for the day is always new, the flower lovely.

Is not the rose lovelier when its thorns sharpen?
Does not the potter’s knife need its razor edge

to pare the lips of the wine jar and smoothen
its mouth that lovers may drink to full desire?

Bare your body then to its wild abandon, salve
it with the cool spring water now welled

from the earth, and open your mouth to kiss
the sunlight, defy the anguish. Never say, not yet.

Let it come! Let the leaves fall on this Upanishad,
because the leap of faith is never to say Not yet.

 

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 19: DISCARDED DAYS (ARE OUR LIVES MADE OF DISCARDED DAYS? IS THIS OUR BEST SHOT AT STAYING ALIVE?)

What does it mean to stay alive? Why stay alive, when dying is easier?

 

DISCARDED DAYS

What have we discarded, cutting through tunnels

we must have plodded, to quarry from lives we
might have been accidentally given? What loves
have we found, what hearts have we lost? Layers
of clay, cracked stones, and silt could build us our
houses of hurts and ruptured dreams. Not a home.

But we take care to wake up to days we can shape,

to moments we could mould like delicate bowls
whence we share victual and drink for our hungry
and thirsty souls. When travel becomes a burden
of faithlessness or pain, we call each other out:
Be brave, hold on, take on the world if we must!

When these passageways fall dark, we walk on.

fter all, our lives are not made of discarded days.

 

This poem was inspired by a poem written by Norfolk VA poet Luisa A. Igloria. "Time teaches a lighter tread: or/the body bound to gravity must shed/layer after layer. What progress is tracked, /comes only in the manner of what’s discarded: "---From “The Road of Imperfect Attentions” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa. 07-30-11

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 20: GETTING OUT TO GET IN (WILL I BE MY OWN HEALER. MY LAST AND FINAL GOD?)

Will I mould myself any which way I am pleased to behold as my own creation, not in the image of someone who chooses to be absent or gone?

GETTING OUT TO GET IN

One way or the other, we will get out to get in.
There are no borders here, nor limits, no doors
To slam. I am my own clay, brittle now, but I
Will mould myself any which way, I am pleased
To behold as my own creation, not in the image
Of someone who chooses to be absent or gone.

But who cares anymore? There are no measures
Nor beats I must march by, breathe by. I am free,
Am I not, to perish any which way I live or err?
Like my own moulder, shape or reshape my face
The way I want to meet all the same faces I meet,
And I will be my own healer, my last and final god.

Idle now, I am meant to dance at full throttle.
One way or the other, I will get in before I get out.


This poem was prompted by: "Who pays heed anymore? Three birds in succession thunk against the glass. Which/ one is pursuer, which pursued? Danger and excitement. Dance at full throttle."---From “Throttle Ghazal” Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-19-12

 

BIG QUESTIONS, 21: A SUN-DRENCHED ELSEWHERE (WHERE WILL I GO WHEN I AM OLD AND GRAY?

Where Would I Find the Leftovers of Life? 

A SUN-DRENCHED ELSWHERE

 

"Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere."---Isabelle Eberhardt

 

Sometime soon, I must swing down

from my sundown hammock,
get back to those unpasted pictures.

Albums have more life here than I need.
They can be nagging, flogging,
their bursting sunshine smiles nailing

time and love in sun-drenched elsewhere:

there, a place for lost seashells,
here, a cliff to dive into lost memories from.

Where have they all gone? Or faded into?

These walls are blank now,
where they hung mute on nailed frames.

Where shall I go from here when shadows

would no longer grow tall?
Will I even be able to talk to mottled walls?

I must go back somehow to a sun-drenched

refuge, wherever elsewhere
they have frozen into these dead pictures,

carrion of wonder in yellowed album pages.

Where have they gone, what place
awaits to return the days I have yet to shape?

I must find that one sun-drenched place

that haunts me now and see you
there before I abscond into those shadows.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 22: YEARNING FOR THE OTHER SIDE (WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO "KICK THE BUCKET"?)

 

What does it mean to die? Has anyone come back to tell us what really lies beyond? It is an inexorable truth, but aside from the clinical meaning of dying, what emotions are felt at the critical moment? Has anyone come back from the other side to confirm certain romanticized beliefs about eternity thereat, or infinite bliss with one's Maker? Is it true that beyond it lies "the nobility of man, and beyond it the only hope?"

 
YEARNING FOR THE OTHER SIDE

When I am dead, my dearest,/ Sing no sad songs for me,/Plant thou no roses at my head,/ Nor shady cypress tree:/ Be the green grass above me.---Christina Rossetti


When death and dying are lumped together
as “kicking the bucket,” there seems little
reason for a lachrymose ritual that will cost
a lifetime’s nest egg. And yet, and yet.
A send-off at sea is as good as any–one
is flushed off the starboard to become part
of whence life came, or where it ends. Debris.

Do not send for whom the bell tolls, some
tired man holding a ready bucket of waste,
warned the unready, unprepared, or untidy.
Inexorably, inevitably, the bell takes its toll.

Like a confusing game, kicking the bucket
is nothing but a tiresome waiting game.
Let the jasmine bloom where they may,
when they may; no one has yet come back
to say if they, too, were enriched by manure
from the overturned pail, nor say, when the day
the game ends, they had no bucket of waste.
—

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 23: CONTRA MUNDUM (WHY SHIELD HEART, HEARTH, AND HOME WITH DEFIANCE?)

What price life if it were merely a wading through the gentle streams of a lotus land? 

CONTRA MUNDUM

 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.—Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

 

Like silt at the bottom of creek boulders,
wading against the current must be residue

of a proclaimed apostasy, a paradise lost,
somewhere East of Eden. But it was good.

There would be toil and a struggle for love,
and upon his progeny an edict of suffering
pain at the birth of all begotten offspring.

But does this act not bring exquisite joy?

What price life if it were merely a wading
through the gentle streams of a lotus land?

Why flaunt dominion over all that grows
or dies for these where nature is never spent?*

Let me shield my heart, hearth, and home
with all the strength and defiance I can hold.

 

*Hopkins
 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 24: WHEN WORDS COME BACK (WHY APOLOGIZE FOR THE MANNER YOU LIVED?) 

WHEN WORDS COME BACK

 
(For my Children: That They May Forgive)

 

There are no lessons deep enough, clear enough,
that they could hold on to or use to decipher,
or understand, or even to respond: Of what use?

Of what use are murmuring creeks that turn
blue when they flow into the river’s mouth
as it meanders to an open sea, itself a tributary

to all that is deep and dark and dangerous
in these untamed oceans, beginnings and ends
of life, the vast expanse of all our explorations.

What does it matter that the moon swings low
over pine branches, or that the urgent calls
to trek back to forgotten origins are inexorable?

You can only counsel them enough of beauty,
because this earth makes it more often an omen
of regrets, or even an augury of faithless betrayal.

When the words you lisped--as they turned
somnolent in your arms--come back to haunt them,
they will rush back to you and pray for strength.

When that time comes, do not mumble an apology,
because this has never been needed nor accepted.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 25: RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU (HOW BIG CAN WE BECOME?)

Can we be any bigger or better than those who came before us? Why is this necessary to find life significant and meaningful? How big can we become?

 

RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU 

The space cleared/is bigger than they were/...as the maker of the snow angel/ once they get up from the ground.---From “Personal Space” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist

 

I thought it was the other way around:

When one is no longer there, he will be
bigger than the space he occupied. I
cannot begin to gather the memories
grown rampant of those I have loved
and lost, they will fill my days to the brim.

How can I run with my father through

those fields with a wayward kite? How
can I sing those goodbye songs in my
abuela’s tremulous voice? Will I keep
in tempo with grandfather’s steps when
I find myself walking up the winding
stairwells, my little palms in his hands?

Will I tell those tales of enchanted

elves and flirting fairies as animatedly
as grandmother Teodora, and hold
my own grandchildren in thrall? How
large a space must I have to grow with
them while I keep this quiet watch over
the rhythm of days as we bravely wait?

I will not be able to fill these spaces you

have carved yourselves when you were
here---they overwhelm me with grandeur.
How will I cope with the largeness of your
presence now that you have gone from us?

 

Like the lad who threw himself on the snow

to create his winged likeness, I find my
snow angel larger than I am achingly small
engulfed by lingering memories of your
abiding love and immeasurable greatness.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 26: WITH THIS TOUCH, WE KNOW (IN THOSE HOUSES WHERE WE GREW, HOW SOULFUL ARE THOSE MEMORIES STILL?) 

Why do we need to touch those that have touched us? When do know when we must let go? In those houses where we grew, how soulful are those memories still?

 

WITH THIS TOUCH, WE KNOW

“We tore down the ancestral home. It had termites all over.” –Letter from Home

We go in and out of the chambers of grace
and afflictions in the heart of things at our
own peril. These are houses we scarcely know,

but before long we think we have known,
and cried at every mention of how things were
in those days in those houses where we grew.
 

We have known them all: the familiar songs,
the loves gone by, the pains forgiven, the hurts
that linger, and all that has touched us we now

want to touch, maybe not with caressing hands
but certainly with steady and soulful embraces
that know how to let go when things must go.

We have known them all already, we have touched
them all. With each touch we have learned to pray.

 

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 27: GRAVESTONE SCRAPING (WHAT, INDEED, DO WE KNOW ABOUT ETERNITY?)

What, indeed, do we know about eternity? Has anyone come back from the other side to tell us what we have known by faith or what we can hope to know before we kick the bucket?

 

GRAVESTONE SCRAPING

 

Has anyone come back from this defiled form

and mapped out ways to get back to that eternity
we claim as heirs to, where days are as chartless
as the river stream that must flow to an endless,
ceaseless fountainhead which has no beginning?
There is no other way back except by destruction.

When every rampart has been carted away, we

do not pine for them like those we cannot lose
because we store them in vaults of our memory:
they are our milestones of an afterlife we choose
to build from achieved desires, fulfilled dreams--
these chambers of a heart that will not crumble.

What, indeed, do we know of eternity? Save this:

We are never away from it. Until memory fades.

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 28: NO EXIT (WHAT IS OUR CLOSEST LOOK AT HELL? CAN WE LIVE A HELL OF A LIFE AND STAY ALIVE?)

 

What does hell look like? What is our closest look at hell where we are? Can one live a hell of a life and stay alive?

 

NO EXIT

Endless malls that have no exits
should be our closest look at hell:
too many nice-to-haves too little
time, no cash nor credit cards—
no unemployment cheques nor
bank debits, only foreclosure notes.

But what’s so nasty about Hades
with air-conditioned corridors?
That knock-off Louis Vitton purse,
or that Burberry bag slaved over
by starving waifs in Bangladesh,
you can do without—but in this
heat, in this beastly humid heat,
why does it matter if there is No Exit
from an endless mall air-cooled
by the taxes paid from mortgaged
homes that will soon become houses
grabbed by money-lenders and realtors?

Here, where lilac leaves hang limply
at the end of a dead dry day, I dream
of an endless mall that has no exit.
Like that homeless tramp snoozing
his hunger (or hangover) away near
MacDonald’s, I hope I never wake up.

 

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 29: HAPPINESS GRAFFITI (WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE US HAPPY? WHY WORRY/ BE HAPPY.)

What can make us Happy? Why do we need to be happy? Can one be happy without being free"to dream the impossible dream?"
 

HAPPINESS GRAFFITI

“Sleep then work/work then sleep/I am free.” ---Graffiti on Wal-Mart’s Wall

 

 

Must have been a dead-beat father,

Must have been a cheating mother,
Must have been their runaway kid,
Must have been a homeless tramp:

Who would scrawl a happy graffiti

Like that? A stock boy at WalMart?
His mom who just quit and found
A lover working nights, asleep days?

Or his sleep-deprived old man gone

Berserk with new found freedom
Having been thrown out of wedlock
And mocked as sans prowess in bed?

Is this all they need to be happy?

Work then sleep. Sleep then work.
I am free. A new union mantra? Are
You happy? But are they really free?

 

 

BIG QUESTIONS 30: A  RAISON D'ETRE

 

In search of a reason for being? Why not make it our duty to spread beauty as a reason for being?

 

 

 

A RAISON D’ETRE

 

Imagine if all of us were caterpillars,
all inching toward that one branch
or leaf whence we spread our wings
to carry out a bounden duty of flitting
from one rose garden to a hillock
smothered by a rainbow of pansies:

 

Would we race to the highest branch
and shed our cocoon shackles quickly
to fulfill this raison d’etre of spreading
beauty where it is scarce or now gone?
Imagine if all that we lived for were a
task as gleeful as this godlike whimsy.

Would we not scale beyond this boot,
and swing beyond this silken thread?
Or tear through bramble or grappling
gossamer webs that drag us down
even as we crawl toward sunlit fronds
to spread our wings and get beauty done?

 

—ALBERT B. CASUGA

 Mississauga, June 26, 2014