(for dying Ambazonian children and mothers)
(i)
Behind the hills,
Broad-shouldered
Bamboos rise
And skip across
Like fleeing giraffes
From chasing
growling galloping feasts.
And tall trees
And rolling jumping mountains
Wave only smoky
And foggy hands.
I see not even
A candlelight, onyx
Stretched-out sheets
And screens
Of a shifting night
Glued to itself
Still hanging everywhere.
Darkness brews spider
Rags of beasts to crawl
And lurch through
Bedsides of hiding mothers
And children cut off
From sun in the thick bushes.
A pitch night spraying
Dark blindness, carves out
Caves of a blanketed
But swinging obsidian
And slate-feathered night
Not even a star
Can dig out
A path of rays through.
As it flies down
To flash light
For fleeing whimpering
And wincing children
Caught in a dead-end
Of darkness opening a door
To a chamber harboring
A roaring lion
Whisking its smoky tail,
As it licks blood off its mouth.
(ii)
Sun, hiding your face
Above layers of dark drifting
Clouds. O sun stretching
Out hands I cannot
Draw closer to a fallen tree
Of cheeping clucking chicks.
O sun, jump down
From a sky
Still climbing laggers
To pull out feathers
And afterfeathers
Of your rays
We're pulling with an orison
To pull out mother
And fear-mangled children
From a deep dark hole
Full of fumes and smoke
From burnt-down hay.
And choking reeds
No longer standing to chant
The wind-driven song
Into the ears
Of a thousand Stars
Carried by flashlights
Pointed
And waved by dwarfs,
Their voices still
Too low to be heard across
Walls of a bloating night
Behind a twill
And plain weave
Of night
Hiding a sun's tail
Only wiping off sleeping eyes
Now seeing sprawling
Bouncing bones
That balloon through
Rays still flailing
Grains of darkness
Off a tall cob of night
Still filtering rays
Of a tottering,
But head-lifting day.
There is a war in the territory of Ambazonia and no one seems to care. Maybe poems such as this will help
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
A beautiful poem. Deeply poignant and moving. Great imagery.