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Annus Horribilis

What would I do without this world faceless incurious

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                                                           —Samuel Beckett                      

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What to make of this world always 

On the brink of rupture or truth’s abyss—

Where lies strut like dogma and murder is

Touted as public policy, and victims are 

To blame? Terror or bomb-blast postpone 

Or prolong the horror on our TV screens, 

And the arrogance of ignorant power

Unfolds daily like the force of nature

In our living rooms? And if we blinked 

Or looked away, the Breaking News 

Has broken, when we return the gunman 

With his semi-automatic is dead, and with

Him a score of his random targets, 

The bystander bleeding, sirens screaming, 

Flood or wildfire has swept the neighborhood?

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FallenAngels.jpg

"Fallen Angels." Actually  polychromed cherubim & other figures

at a workshop in Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar awaiting either repair or placement

in the rebuilt, recreated antique buildings of the heritage resort

 

 

 

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What to do with a world covering its 

Victims with blankets: nearest of kin must be 

Notified first, no one knows whether a child 

Or relative had gone to a mass shooting

Or a concert? Where infants and cities 

Shrink or crumble in a war never their own 

Or of their making, but heat-seeking missiles 

Or blind drones have found their targets: 

A school bus or a wedding party but not 

The tent or tunnel of the chief terrorist 

But everyone running for their life are 

Potential assassins. Is there a chance we could 

Zap the scenes by remote, freeze the action, 

Turn off the sound, switch to another channel, 

Twist reality to an alternate universe—

 

Where Famine becomes Plenitude of water

And fruit, beaches are not choked with plastic,

Fire tearing into flesh becomes a  mother’s

Caress? Where families are whole,

And backyards are picnics in God’s Paradise?

O give us back our world, Whoever holds

The Remote: And after this, our exile

In a shadow cosmos, return us Home,

Show us the fruit of thy womb.

 

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27 November 2018

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