An Escaped Sun Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(to the memory of a baby in Batibo)

(i)

The sun has escaped
from the gold-sprayed,
splayed sky
to sit in the couches

mountains and oceans
off a desert island
carrying sharp-horned bulls
goring each other.

And on the marbled
and bamboo floors
of my veranda
and crawling living room
here in Boston.

Covered with floods
of light from candelabra
and moon flashes
from a night sky -
brewed by storm-struck
smoky memories -

creeping in slowly
to paste itself on the ceiling
flickering with stars
falling on hands and feet.

(ii)

And on lips that won't
make the sun rise,
shine and shimmer
from its orange ball.

In the volcanic
core of buddies now stuck
in bog by bushy banks,
only a deep night grows.

Guests hoist faces,
a labyrinth of tributaries
running, cruising

into a babbling stream
that devoured all water
from cheeks and philtrum.

Pouring the water
into a stretching culvert
that dumps a detritus
of withered leaves

shed by life's tree
no longer bearing fruits,

but gently clogging
and walling in
the smooth-flowing
river floating us

in a leaking boat
full of night-clothed faces
carrying only a veil
of half-century of nights.

(iii)

In the living room
ribbon-sized flags of faces
raised by sobbing men
and cricket-chirping women

skipping to fall flat
on others' soaked cushion
arms and palms
still wet with the rain
that fell from muzzles.

And drove out the villagers,
who returned
to find the charred flower
of a baby brewing an eclipse.

A father wailed
for the sun to jump down
with baby,
but only a garden
of hugging hands grew
wildflowers

everybody sipped
to stroke
and fondle a memory.