RIC S. BASTASA

you look at the poverty of other people
romancing it like a metaphor in your poetry
the color of a man's unwashed shirt with mud
and blood, dried sweat,
the sound of a hungry baby like the sound
of thunder coming from the breasts of mountains
the ignorant woman like a beautiful native naked
and bathing in the river and rising like a famous nude painting
their poverty to the rhythm of some blues
the colors in brown, and black and violet and scarlet
the trembling hands and biting lips and blank stares
the blackest background ever
to a future as bleak as ember
to a poverty hopeless as ever.