Helen Keller contemplates current events
By Myke U. Obenieta
To see or hear no evil, ask the monkeys.
Not the dark and the flap of its feathers
between the ears. Nor silence igniting cotyledon
of consciousness. It explodes like petals out of lips
shaping the last breath. As it did when a whole village
suddenly saw, in the wake of a mudslide, the deepest
secret of roots. Or when old women stumbled
in a stampede to the game-show tune
of an instant million and heard in one fell
swoop the rumba of their bones so intimate
with the weight of mountains. It looms no less
ominous than smoke and water rising past
the breakdown of ice caps while the cold sprawls
its continents of blood from bombs reaping its
bumper harvest of ash. It is the taste of stain
from newspaper ink. It smudges some leaders’ smile
on the front page from where shrieks a forest
of monkeys. It’s when heaving a sigh of rage
gets too tricky for either Braille or sign language.
(Sun.Star Cebu Weekend)