The New Man Poem by RIC BASTASA

1

on those younger days
when i went up to the high and lonely mountain
i wrote about a young emaciated brown girl in the faraway hill
thriving on a chunk of muscovado
sugar and a handful of off-white steamed rice for breakfast
there was no dried fish on the plate of a banana leaf

i had written about an unjust social order
and i dreamed of immediate reforms

it was when i too was struggling then
over a loss of an identity in the city
over a poverty that struck us like a plague
of the century

2

now things have changed a lot
i cannot trace that girl
and the place where she once lived had been all erased from the map
the road had been closed
and the hill flattened to the ground

and i do not long for change anymore
my voice has mellowed like a cat with a wriggling fish in its mouth
it is silenced by my own social sinfulness
this contentment from within
because the social order now has fed me well

i have become a man stripped of its restless soul
masked and displayed as another useful tool