Elegy for Adrian

I wrote this in memory of Adrian Corderes, an ex-gangleader-turned-scholar at the College of St. Benilde who was murdered last year after brokering a peace between two warring streetgangs. Despite warnings that he might be targeted, Adrian chose to meet with the rival gangleader on the latter's territory. He went unarmed, hoping to convince the other to abandon the path of violence altogether. At the end of their meeting, Adrian happily embraced the other man, convinced that he had won him over. He was waiting for a jeepney ride home home when a blow to the head with a wooden beam stove in his skull.  The killer was never identified. Adrian was not only a scholar at CSB, he was also a student volunteer, a role model and an elder brother to his co-volunteers. Since disavowing his former life, Adrian had sought to help  others like him break with streetgangs and get an education.

When I first heard Adrian's story, I was both moved and profoundly disturbed. This poem was the result.

Elegy for Adrian

You came to us not quite a man,
to redeem what could still be redeemed,
soul-sick with orgies of  bullets and brawls
forsaking the legacy of the street.

What made you think that you could change things?
That virtue might wrest that longed-for peace?
You took our Word too much to heart the
lessons we only half-believed.

Down blooded gutters hot tears flow
past bludgeoned skull and butchered dreams
all ground up with the brain and the bone—
carrion for a canine feast.

And so the circle goes unbroken—
blow for blow and hate for hate.
Do either your life or death still matter?
How much is choice? How much is fate?

For thus it’s been from the beginning
since Abel fell to pride and wrath -
the gods of war cannot abide
those who choose the narrow path.

To unravel the curse you paid the price -
in dearest coin– but was it in vain
that you made of your blood their benediction –
how answer when Abel embraces Cain?