In remembrance of the 62nd Anniversary of the Massacre of Agdangan

October 17th 1944


A dusty gray smoke
replaces the promise of
immaculate clouds of a new day
in the land scorched by the sun.
No one foresaw the fate of
doomed families, an end so grim
to stumble upon.
The sword unseeing, thrusts
and slashes with abandon
and lives cut down
like sheaves of grass and
left to prosper on fallow fields.
All to appease the vengeful,
bitter heart of the conqueror.
The old resigned to the falling
of the embers from the roof,
shield their wrinkled worn faces
with their bony arms,
and the young and the strong
let out suffering cries
and writhe in pain and wriggle
to be free of binding ropes as babies
are tossed to the bayonets
and the holocaust.
And a day passes to memory
from the infamy war