Reflection 4 Poem by Edmundo Farolan

Even songs deceive;
months of reflection and continuity;
yes, life changes;
and maybe, the snow has changed me;
it has not made me an atheist;
it has made me an imitator,
a thinker whose freedom moves by itself and plays,
like God plays,
with consoling words like love
and prolonged anti-masochism, anti-agony, and anti-sadism.
That is why we are not really who we are.
We don’t even know what we want in life,
or what to be sincere about,
or satirical, or honest, or ironic.
These don’t make us what we are,
not even with kindness or regret
or the Catholic virtues of love, faith and hope.

Pause. Sentences end. They begin again.
And end. And begin.
Grumble, complain, pretend to be sincere.
It doesn’t matter.
Life is absurd.
And so, be what you want to be.
I have not decided yet.
Perhaps my decision will be indecision.
That is somehow also a decision.
It will be the perhaps of the be-all and end-all;
that certain drifting, the ever-creating sensation of novelty.

Perhaps I’ll conform.
But this decision will be just a front.
I’ll still be the same rebellious non-conformist,
a mad and confused writer who begins and ends,
who wants to symbolize ethereal sensations,
noise, sleepiness, everything in life,
everything, even hope,
like indirect autobiographies of poetic and non-poetic reflections,
universal repetitions of the history of mankind,
new faces but the same deeds,
considerations, repeated conformity,
people again, more people,
more limitations, distances, reflections,
more gods, blasphemous portrayals, usurpers like Lucifer.

Even philosophers will not understand the absurd mystery called life projected unto death,
moving and moved by the mind and its dark corners –
the unknown,
never external because everything is here in psychological conflicts;
these angsts of the spirit portrayed by unmentioned souls reflected over and over again by doubts, screams, and by more dialogues.

Ordered humanity: does your order have meaning?
Can it possibly have meaning?
The unknown: the object of the afterlife, the universal conjecture,
this infinity, this debateable, mysterious absoluteness.