things.

Beauty From Pain
-SuperChick

The lights go out all around me
One last candle to keep out the night
And then the darkness surrounds me
I know I'm alive but I feel like I've died
And all that's left is to accept that it's over
My dreams ran like sand through the fists that I made
I try to keep warm but I just grow colder
I feel like I'm slipping away

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

My whole world is the pain inside me
The best I can do is just get through the day
When life before is only a memory
I'll wonder why God lets me walk through this place
And though I can't understand why this happened
I know that I will when I look back someday
And see how you've brought beauty from ashes
And made me as gold purified through these flames

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

Here I am, at the end of me
Trying to hold to what I can't see
I forgot how to hope
This night's been so long
I cling to Your promise
There will be a dawn

After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

Sunday, 4.23.2006 @ 8:00pm
I'm on the plane flying back home from Seattle. I've started to read through a bound book that looks like it contains approximately 127 pages of poems or "lines" as the preface calls them. From what I can infer from the preface, it sounds like my dad and my mom worked together to compile the poetry my mom wrote over a two year period from 1949 to 1950.

The preface says that this "volume is a collection of all the poetic writings of RSA." RSA were the initals of my mom: Rosalina Sasoy Aguellon. The preface ends with,

"It is our interest in poetry that has made this collection possible. But the foremost inspiration was Love."

with the initals of "FTE" as the author of the preface. FTE were the initals of my father: Francisco Tagle Escudero.

So far, I'm almost half-way through the book and I find it pretty amazing. I'm not a huge poetry fan or student by any measure. The only poetry I really read with any regularity and identify with is Biblical poetry as in the Psalms or some of the other Old Testament books. Words are significant for me as well. So on one level, I can appreciate what I'm reading. I have found many deeply descriptive and intriguing word plays and pictures in my mom's poetry. I'm not sure how these would be received by another reader, but since I know that my mom wrote these lines . . . I catch myself looking to see if I can understand what she was thinking or had in mind when she wrote them. Much of what I've read so far, I can totally see them coming from her -- it's just unmistakably her style and wording. I would love to build a visual and musical collage around these lines of prose, but it's daunting. We'll have to see what becomes of this new "project."

The poems are filled with much about love, longing, passion, sorrow, hope, distress . . . take this excerpt for instance:

Let my songs be the carpet of thine life and my love the cloak of thine heart.

On one level, those are just words. However, on a different level, those are words of intimate longing and desire between a husband and a wife. The imagery this conjurs up is quite beautiful if you stop and think about it. Songs of praise & encouragement, support and love would soften the walk along life's path. The lover's love covering & warming, protecting and shielding the heart of the beloved. I think it was a deep love for one another that my parents shared.

A while back, I once heard a sermon on the radio where the pastor talked about how seminaries in previous centuries required students to have a well-established command of the English language. One example of an assignment: On paper, detail 100 different ways to express the sentiment of "That was pleasing to me, thank you." That would be an amazing and intimidating exercise to my 21st century mind to try and come up with a hundred different ways to communicate that sense. No wonder 17th century English is so eloquent, but hard to follow to a modern reader. We don't know jack in comparison! (Oh the irony in that last line . . . )

What I'm finding is that in the limited exposure that I've had to Mom's poetry so far, I can totally see how much thought and care she poured into the words she chose. That's totally Ma!

Amazed,

C.

I've known that Mom was a poet. I'd not seen many of her poems, but found out that we have a single bound book that contains many of her poems. Here is one of them that had won an award when she was in college and was later published.

C.
______________________
REALIZATION OF BEAUTY

You are beautiful in the body He created,
Yet I see you beyond the opaqueness of this matter;
That is why there are distances in my gazes,
And seasons in my voices:
For I know you in my secret!

You gaze at me, perchance to seek that which
only your sight can reach;
And yet, I behold the thickness of the mist,
That covers your weakened sight;
That is why there are gaps in my words
and undecided flight in my consciousness!

You try to anchor in my sensitive ears,
The flutter of your lovely subtle thoughts;
I am gladdened for they are passwords of my life,
That I open the heavy-chained gates of trance --
But I find you unmoving in your stand:
for your sight fails to see the gates beyond.
my gladness!

That is why the abyss that makes the streams of
my songs,
At times get dried and parched in the heat of your
unknown blindness-- leaving
But deserted traces of the intermittent spring
of joyful understanding!

_{Copyright 1949, Rosie Escudero}