The Betrayal Poem by RIC BASTASA

my father when he was forty
bought a fifteen hectare land in Bulawan.
Mother was not happy.
She said she only needs ten cents to go
to heaven.
The point is it is too far from the city.
There is no electricity, and no water.
Though i was brought there when i was a child
and i like the rolling hills and the clouds
which you can touch by your bare hands.
The natives look at us with high accord.
When we arrive there they dance with their gongs.
The children like to slide on the hills and
sing their own songs.
We bring them jackets and they give us pigs.
We share them our stories but they have more
always to tell.
It was a harmonious relationship.
But not now. Father and mother died, and the
place had grown roads. And some houses.
And some cars already reach there.
We had a title for the land but the natives
had grown selfish.
They did not like us anymore.
We trusted them and then they resented our presence.
We paid the taxes, they harvest the fruits.
There is no sharing anymore, claiming the land as theirs.
I thought that it is only the rich who are greedy
and exploitative.
Now i have changed. All people are greedy and selfish.
No one wants to share.
What you own, becomes theirs.
And you are a stranger again
to what once was yours.
The poor are no longer poor.
The natives are the oppressors now.
The landscape changes. The streets have names.
You spend for what you eat.
You have no more workers to speak about.
You are not welcome to your home anymore.
And they feast and laugh and promise
that if you come again, there will be blood.
There will be dead people and they will not have
their decent funerals.
No prayers will be said.
No priest can say mass.
There is no more pig to roast
for those who remain to be cowards.
For here is the new rule: the mighty wins.
Reason is dead. Law is irrelevant.