Early Sunset on a Landscape

Dr Abe V Rotor

View from a hill in Antipolo, Rizal, June 1, 2013

Afternoon and it's already sunset,

behind gray clouds the sun's shining,

wearing a red veil over the horizon,

with dust stirred into the air floating.

Beauty in birth and death - and life,

in between - clinging to final fate

in man's hand - and oh! how lonely,

how sad, nil of hope and losing faith.

Landscape - but whose landscape?

robbed from people, robbed from nature,

from beauty sublime, to one's design

for gain and power, not for the future. 

And he speaks on behalf of progress,

measured by concrete and steel,

by the amenities of the Good Life,

                             in unending want, incessant fill. ~