An Eye's Blink Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A moment is as sharp
as the sun-rayed edge that cuts -
not mending.

It's the gavel dropped
by a storm cruising east - not
drifting back west, where sun sets,
dressed in umber.

The hue of a new day
is hatched in a daisy closet
and cloaked with fabric
of gliding passing moments.

It's the pearl or porcelain
of a split second
past the chime when cotton
grew powder

splitting from melting lace
splitting from parchment.

Every moment strikes its gong,
rings its bell in a string
of moments sharp like sun rays,

stiff like a planted knight
arched for a salute,
five fingers close to temple.

(ii)

A moment is the pressed
trigger, the lever pushed down
or up, flooding a room

with a splash of light or an eclipse
gluing coal to suit.

Where is Alaifang? With a trigger
he crossed a bridge

over a roaring deluge
to a world dressed
in fog he'd not known.

Where is Ndongsah? In a blink,
he crossed a bridge

on his sick bed stretching
from shore to shore -
to a deathbed's bank he doesn't know.

(iii)

A moment past is a wall
splitting the past
from now, a frost wall

splitting now from a snow curtain
of flakes and drips.

With a blink of the eye, a hue
rockets through a moment,
erects a wall
no one can knock down

in a river's flow,
in a wind's drift,
in a typhoon's shift.

(iv)

In a blink of the eye, a volcano
sticks out its tongue -

not rolling it back before magma
is spat out, hardening
through streets,

a monarch's throne
broken and burnt to ashes
of the melting past

on the wheel roaring off seconds
spun to glide
through a thousand hues

towards the setting sun
behind sky-scraping trees
and star-touching mountains,

the silhouette of a flying bird
helices spinning
flipped-over moments of a history book.