Wailing Women Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Wailing women
(i)

This square yells to the distant stars,
The earth still spinning on its axis
Of fate, on its dazed axis, a hard faceless
Rock crushing every soft pebble
On its track, crushing every granule.

The women carrying olive branches
Have brandished their hopes, mere
Twigs dancing in the air to feed screams
Of claw-slashing, blood-dipped horrors,
All that is left of whistled brittle sighs.

Bare feet, placards for a soft weather
Are neither rifles nor bullets for a twirl
Steadily mounting into a tornado-fed
Blast - but fold back yawns into a sustained
Breeze, into a stream of stainless water

Flowing to wash off their punctured feet,
Where conscience must cleanse itself,
Plucking away vultures' rough feathers
Of death, washing blood-stained hands,
As showers pour down on drab bodies.

(ii)

In the gyre flickering with flying swords,
Swaying wild flames to devour roofs,
Milling high hopes into ash-powdered ghosts,
Let guns' groaning cave mouths be closed
With the breezy shores of thumbed traction.

Let the mumbles and rumbles of hurricanes
Touch down on petals festooning birds
Bred to defy scarecrows, sparing innocent silk
In fields of corn parched by sheer unease,
Wildfires merely sneezing, its embers rosy flowers.

Dark cloudy smoke invading the skies
With sprites in specks and patches faceless
Like the grimaces of hollow hangmen
Taking over fog that once doused hopes
Across fields, stalks and trees, their ovaries,

Seeds for pure grain of gold and crimson fruit.
Their twirling twigs are gem-fed banners
To fan children in pools of their own saliva
Wet with hunger for sheer grain and fruit
Feeding fondles to dress festering wounds.