The Fort's Collagen Poem by Felix Bongjoh

The fort's collagen
The fort was not
Constructed
Out of reinforced concrete,
But mere clay. And reed
That tied together
A square mass held
To its spine by sticks
And raffia bamboo
And elephant grass stems.

And its roof, hay
From the hills, no longer
Held the morning haze,
But breathed out
Timid clouds of smoke
That hovered over with life.

And the hearth
Within an orbit of the season's mirth,
Around which children sat and listened
To the popping of fresh maize
In a maze of puzzling ideas
At a fire's glow. As they enjoyed
The harvest, merrily
Munching sweet grains, their mothers' pride,
So did they also harvest new wisdoms
From the folktales
Of adenoidal voices, the untiring
Glottal scrape of adolescent girls, who dished
Out enticing stories
From salivary unstoppable mouths
Turned cooking pots

Bubbling into short songs and verses,
Which, quite of often, were also choruses taken up
By keen listeners
Regaining consciousness from sleep.
Or, maybe, a trance intensified by the popping sounds
Of gleeful maize.

So I learnt to associate our house
With something special that flowed through
Its veins, giving it that warmth
Which only surrounding familiar birds radiated
Throughout our juvenile sphere.

Over the years, as the clay
House began to lose some of the bond
That held its sticks and bamboo
And stems together,
Lumps of clay disintegrating here and there
From a tired wall.
The house still stood like a fort with its robust clay,
Stood like a castle with its mere warmth.

Once I visited an uncle
In his concrete abode, a colorful
Bungalow strong and steady
In its appearance.
From inside its decorated walls
And from outside sturdy concrete
Sticking out its stony muscles
In a proud display.

But sitting in his house,
I thought I was in a bird's abandoned nest,
No sound, no laughter, no stories
To fan my spirits
With the warmth and freshness, which only the clay family fort
Could afford. With the blood
That only flowed around a giant hearth.

Once in a stormy season, my uncle's
Poorly nailed-in roof
Was blown off by the fiendish, cold-blooded hands
Of a gale - and I felt sad and abandoned
To a cruel fate.

Once in a stormy season, the clay of our family fort
Was almost completely ripped off.
But I felt happy joining hands with others to
Refill the wrinkled walls with clay,
The collagen that not only kept the fort young
But left me in the youth
Of a reinforced protection, the irreversible
Prejudice of warmth.