History Means to Spare None of Us

What did we know of the angel,
how it decided which of our houses 
to mark with chalk, and which with 

the blood of an animal that bleated
six times before being led to slaughter?
What did we know of angels in the first

place, when our mothers raised us to avert
our eyes as we passed beneath the trees
at dusk, when babaylan taught us to listen

for the breathing of kapres lighting 
enormous cigars? If the angel marked us 
safe, we knew it wasn't so much 

because we were exceptionally good 
or favored. Perhaps the animal bleated
three times instead of five or six.

Perhaps hot ashes from the kapre's cigar
fell into the well instead of on our 
thatched roofs. And it doesn't matter 

if you are the mayor's son or the black-
smith's daughter: the dark cloud gathering 
at the foothills isn't a storm coming, 

isn't a pestilence of locusts. It's just 
ordinary smoke rumbling history's 
reproach. It doesn't condone stasis 

or equilibrium; it loves the sound of wind 
stirred up by giant wings, the way it breaks 
the cardinal points from a compass rose.


 


 

In response to Via Negativa: Improvisational.