New Continent
The thought pummels through my mind,
Unidentified,
Yet,
Heavy-
Oppressive-
As I face the tomorrow of my life.
One impinged upon by the grasping unyielding tentacles-
of our yesterday.
And yet I have,
With such audacity,
Set forth to declare
Once and for all,
That this time I shall not be cowed.
I will not move back,
I will not retrace my steps,
I am moving forward
I will never cast my eye back again.
And I want to say that it is not true
that man is irrevocably bound by his past,
That, try as he might,
His mind will always roam and settle there
Or that in his most unconscious thoughts
he will reflect unceasingly upon it.
I want to say that I am, at most,
a pitiable dramatist and illusionist
But this time I have set the cast
and the play is on stage-
And I am moving back no more-
The curtain call has sounded,
And the main lead is not going to bring us
a soliloquy of his past tragedies.
I have determined that
though I be charged with being a chauvinist
a post I neither esteem nor desire,
I will go ahead to stage what my firm faith has always been-
That tomorrow, at least for me,
Is going to be a better day
That I have not lost all
That I am not enslaved
That I shall not put down my arms
That I will look ahead,
that if need be I shall go down fighting,
but that I shall prevail,
so help me God.
Unpublished poem dated December 31 1998