..The Crocodiles Feast..... Poem by RIC BASTASA

the houseboy is patient with me.
perhaps, he is angry why we care for the flowers.
These are the things that we cannot eat there.
His face is grumbling like a hungry pig.
In the mountains where hunger is the law
the flowers are not even grown for the few who die
at an early age.
there is a need to change the soil in the pot.
The magnolias are pale. The roses are dying.
One has to remove the roots, leave only a few
to give room for growth and later lushness.
His hands are sturdy. They are ready for plows
and the buffaloes. When they swim in the river
it is not for pleasure but to catch fish.
Time to stroll on the mountain sides to have
another view of the daffodils.
He is in doubt. Walking in the mountains was
never for daffodils. You walk to fetch water or
to pasture the cows.
You run to escape the tulisanes.
Come, sharpen the bolo, we have to graft the
sampaguita bush.
No, he said, we sharpen this bolo to let the
enemy know that we are ready to kill and
be killed.
There is no common ground between the poor
and the rich. The native is here to be paid
his dues. He plants your song of india for a wage
Not for anything else.

Then he was asked to sit beside him.
He did not like it.He had been dreaming of his dead
mother and his sick brother who has no medicine
in Marupay. His father is infected with malaria
and here he is planting more flowers along the
road leading to the old house of a master.

He admires the sunset. He curses it.
They were never the same. Though made of the
same materials: flesh and bones, one has
a dream, the other has the nightmare.

When you die, i will bury you.
When we die, the river takes us.
The deep water swallows us all.
The crocodiles feast.