Bells and howitzers

Lavigny 5

by Mila D. Aguilar


As the church bells
Toll the hour in Switzerland,
The village fountains
Flow their way.

Every hour on the hour
Signalling the start and end of day
And if you cannot hear
It rings again five minutes after

More insistently.
But the village fountains
Just go on and flow their way,
Eternally.

Towards August's end
The waters of Switzerland
Overflowed on Bern and Lucerne
Taking dozens to their death.

But the bells of Celigny
And Lavigny continued tolling
And the village fountains
Kept on flowing.

By September, some days after,
It was New Orleans.
A hurricane had struck her.
How many thousands died

In that disaster.
The bells of Celigny and Lavigny
Have kept on tolling,
The fountains still are flowing.

In Europe and America
Calamities are unusual.
In the Philippines,
We await our next.

Will it be
Political this time, we wonder.
Or shall an act of God
Finally stop her.

In Celigny and Lavigny
The bells keep tolling,
The fountains flowing.
But in the rest of the world

Both men and women
Have been sowing.



September 4, 2005
6:05-7:10 pm