Reign of the Quisling-Rodents

INFANT PRODIGY

51 COUNSEL Decades on end in stampedes of grab My chagrin is hued in olive drab Fingers and fingers linger still in the till Wonder not, then, how even the soul manages to take ill Amid a clangourous inferno of hustle and bustle Mine are the woes that chink and rustle But if – this vortex of transience – your conscience does withstand Before God and man, in Etheris you shall stand INFANT PRODIGY Sulks, sobs and cries… Running nose over greasy rags, Scratching and picking at your Measled little buttocks. Who bereft you thus Of your parentage? Those lines I see running down your cheeks I recognize; They are the tracks of your tears. So close, so next of kin Are you and I That I can tell When and how you turned orphan, The sad and wry story 52 Of your puny life; The very chapters where your biography Makes for a ribald read Infant prodigy, Abandoned; Dumped into the rot of retrogression Like foetus Disposed of In a latrine. How the rodents have nibbled away At your prodigiousness! Do you hear my sobs too, O infant prodigy! From there where you stand amid those ruins Of a dilapidating legacy; Your hard-earned ancestral bequest? Whatever changes Have made or marred these youngish days of yours, Deep in the bowels of old mother Wouri,* Lie unaltered records of your christening Like a chested treasure Underneath everlasting meanders *River from which Cameroon got its christening ...