Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 15:50:06 GMT 2
Lilia N. Lopez-Chua studied Philosophy at the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, and at Ateneo de Manila University. She was one of the founders and editors of Little Fingers, a poetry magazine in Cebu in the late '70s. She earned her MA English in Creative Writing at Boston University, where she studied poetry with Derek Walcott and George Starbuck. She worked in hospices and with multi-handicapped children, before becoming a technical writer and research analyst specializing in telecommunications and data networking technologies.
"The Ants"
They do not smell when
they die they do not leave us anything
none of them looks forward to his funeral
none of them
looks forward to be remembered
and no one ever wept for them.
there are no ghosts in their world
their dead do not return to complain
of the chill in a different planet
they do not come back begging for prayers
in the other world they are still left
very much to themselves
they go on playing the same game of forgetting
they remember nothing of themselves
they remember nothing of us
nothing of this world
nothing
left to the winds they find
what we all long for
*
"My Countrymen"
My countryment mourn
when the moment is wrong
when the hand sof the clock
turn against it
and run on stolen time
My countrymen will not yawn
they will guard their wings
when days are filled with smoke
and lives are drawn on sand
easy targets of the wind's hand
My countrymen will tie
their strengths together
when the fine rope of justice breaks
at the callous tugs of betrayals
my countrymen will mend it with hope
My countrymen will rise in time
even for a pin of light
drowned in the long
disheveled hair of madness
my countrymen will not be late
My countrymen will clasp
the plain face of truth
like a beloved's face
that lends light and wings
for any season of mourning.
source:
A Habit of Shores, ed. Gemino H. Abad, UP Press, 1999
