Poetry

Brian Evans photo

By

Karlo Sevilla

It Will Be Done

We caught glimpses of it

through the uneven roads we have taken,

and the stations we have reached.

Its fulfillment unfolds, still,

versus the parasites,

with our collective hands,

creating a new wholeness:

Home raised back to abundance.

We all feel the birth pains

of the future we are delivering.

And there will still be wailing…

But it is being born.

And it will be done.

Justice

The tenderest bud blossoms

in infinitesimal spurts intangible

as caterpillar steps, beneath the weight

and weighing of night, unfolding; patient,

faithful, as weathered pilgrim,

unfaltering becomes.

Each sanguine drop stealthily

seeped into ashen soil—from pools spilt from cups

fragmented crushed burned buried left unmarked

clods—shall soon be accounted for; its cry

tears through filaments of air,

tearing crimsoned sky.

Grievous rivulets through veins

of eyes burst forth, and water that finds its level

without fail waters damned plots, till seeds shoot

roots stems leaves till crowning of buds; each shall

lift darkest night till full bloom…

by dawn: vindication.

Karlo Sevilla

Karlo Sevilla, an internationally published poet of Quezon City, belongs to a family of human rights activists. His mother is co-chairperson of the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearances (FIND). An uncle, a labor and human rights lawyer, is a desaparecido since 1977 when the Philippines was under martial law.