Your name is our own: Dolores.
It is a name of sorrow, multiple,
multitude, multiplying.
Dolores Carbonilas Yigal
could have been one of the stars,
beautiful and bright in the New York skies,
its sadness
etched in the face of the moon
glowing yellow, half-burning with its light
desiring to come home again
to Cebu and its skies.
Dolor, Dolores: muliple sorrows
in Binghamton.
There a student earns a life skill
in a language not her own.
Now she lies unmoving
in a cold box
painted to make a passover
of death and debility the country
she left behind is all about.
At Binghamton, another student
lives her dream of a doctor's gown
to get the skills of the while man
to bring home the skills
to her hometown
and there teach her people
English without the accent
English for a living
like what every Filipino have got:
to learn Tagalog alias Filipino
or face the penalty of the bright
gods, them who live in crevices
nooks crannies like bullets
zooming large, in and out
and then with the staccato
of a last laugh
you dream in blood.
Dolor as it is.
Dolores as it is.
Sorrows as sorrows can be
in the eternity of our exilic lives
here in the country
here in other lands.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI/Apr 5/09
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