Cameroon Anthology of Poetry

Bate Besong

23 Bate Besong The Beauty of Exile Do not say you are abandoned And deserted Friend For it is the Beauty of your exile That has shown how ugly we have become Heroes have made their way Along the Tcholliré swamps into nameless Catacombs, martyrs: Their limbs became too frozen For them to rise to their feet, to walk Observe now how these same jokers Despoil the communal treasures They brush with hasty steps the torture-chambers Away; To the zombie clamour of moronic processions. Or, soon when these same revellers Start running round again in circles Then, the stench of alien obloquies, frothing Ceaselessly From a long-rutted Ideology – very well – Where are the hired runners Who will bridge the firepower Of our anger across the Mungo If some limbs are still too weak To stand on their feet, if, some brains Are still too plaited with steel – Gray streams? Who will convert the broodings 24 Of these people over the past Into bouquets to a new dawn? So do not say you are abandoned And deserted friend It is the beauty of your exile That has shown how ugly we have become. T The Grain of Bobe Augustine Ngom Jua (For Sam Nuvalla Fonkem , Ngwa-Nyambodi & all…) When Bobe Augustine Ngom Jua died As leaves fell on the garden between The slow chimes of the funerary bell, so gentlyThe iguanas Of our Cameroon history books Who were left behind Emerged from their prehistoric slime: A sphinx of evil magic hung above my head As they Tore apart limb by limb The primeval psaltery over the pine trees Crying Bobe’s fame. He left behind In those days, (there was sadness In your cheeks) – all that time! The grain to you who plough the prairies Dread; The droughts of the pharaohnic iguanas tearing The barrages of the Nile In the sad lonely hours long We explored the reddened rubble Of the sickle For our farmers trapped in the renegade’s plantation Ah such hopeless nights hearts straining long 25 A voice grew hoarse. Drop. A decade gone. And indeed these are no empty words For if I have denuded fear In your eyes again It is so; here we are lacerating This Earth with wounds Inflicted to the tunes of the subtle Gallows; Of our own cultivation! So you see? (the plague on hour heads if we fail the generation of young Dante) For We have too long applauded: The pharaohs Worming their ways back into their immense Sphinxes of steel… Envoi: Ah! the time has come, Friend To return from the mountain; Shore the cavalier floods Of the immortal Mungo Or we shall find again tomorrow In the garden As dewfall spreads magic Over the chameleon tongue Of the iguana’s perennial comeback We shall find again once more Bobe’s seed, gone; With the drought If you don’t remember this Friend How shall the provincial grain sprout 26 And grow? ...