Saying Goodbye to this Year of our Yearning

To say goodbye to this year

of our yearning is to experience

this holding on to our hope,

timeless and endless.



This has been a year of surprises

like those eternal early morning hours

with their rainbow in the light

rain and balmy sunlight.



It is passing by the hurdles

as the world watches

with its conscience intact.



How it registered

its protest

about elections

about wars

about the seasons of strife

about the dire desires.



How it commandeered

our cargo of cares

to see this multitude of pain

in the way it should be seen

in the hearts of mankind

as each man, woman, child

reeled from the torments

of sufferings

from believing in the lies of life

from lying in the beliefs about life

from living in the belief about beliefs.



The sufferings came about

wearing suits of various kinds

like the success on the sleeves,

the self-serving statements

about offering our prayers for the dead

our tender mercies for merciful murderers

and all those that justified our sad act

of inflicting pain on those who had always known

how is it to survive.



The world watched with its

conscience intact, not a crack,

not yet, as it said in cannot go on

with killing to kill all the obstacles

to life.



This is a moral imperative,

this announcement

of good manners

and right conduct

in this last day of saying

goodbye to the year

of our yearning

even if we are

the mightiest and

the strongest,

even if we own

half of the world

and its kingdoms as the devil promised

us.



This is the best way, and no other better

way, to say goodbye to this year of our lost hopes.

With the wars and terrors, in our words as in our deeds,

we start a new year right with this goodbye

to our irredeemable acts of sparing lies

to tell our truths, to free us of our fears at last.





Aurelio S. Agcaoili

Torrance, CA

Dec. 31, 2004

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