Order for Massacre

"Massacre planned, says Buluan vice mayor," Inquirer, Nov. 26, 2009

I come from a country

of bloody contradictions,

regrets, deaths. It is a republic

this sorrow we are prone to

even inherit even take it easy

even as we have yet to learn to live.

And now this

order for massacre,

fifty-seven of them

and perhaps more

that only the new graves

and the murderous backhoe

that does not how to tear up

ends up as the chieftest

of all the Maguindanao mourners

of this Ampatuan land

Allah and God have forgotten

on this Monday the angels went mad.

The president of the country

has forgotten what grief is.

When you lose memory

and mothers, warriors

and women who saw

the meaning of good deeds

and you are the leader of the land,

you grab your beads, fall on your knees

and say all that which substitutes

for this collective lament.

This could have been a convoy

to their death like a procession

of hopes without any name,

and we all see

and we all read

and we commit all these

to a morning confession we hope

to make in the centuries

that will come to us

if we are lucky enough

or we bury in the sands

of time if we cannot fight it out

this impunity we define

with gallons and gallons of blood.

We make fertile the land now

with our own flesh and fear

with our bodies and breath

with our faith and failure?

And we order for massacre:

fifty-seven of them

and the number is increasing

by day when honesty goes back in

on the pages of our testament.

I come from a country

that mistakes democracy

with the massacre of what divine mercy

is left in our remembrance

of the past we look forward to

like this order for the death

of memory that lives on and on.

Fifty-seven lives lost in Ampatuan

and we remain callous, calm.

A Solver Agcaoili

Manoa/Nov 25/09