Cameroon Anthology of Poetry

John Nkemngong Nkengasong (1959)

67 John Nkemngong Nkengasong (1959) Mfoundi Faery Sweet dame, sweet woman in her prime You cannot see how stars gaze in wonder That lovely bloom of yours Till they are shaken out of wits And the sun has taken sudden flight Sweet woman symbol of god You cannot know what anguish this hour bears You cannot hear the clatter And the clang of falling walls The boom! Boom! Bang! Of the rifles And the wullillilliying of dying voices For the Arch Artist stowed His idol on holy ground Far, far away from misery Sweet woman, O blossom night Your glossy laps have shamed the moon And that luster on your lips Once withered the rose of tyranny Your breath, that gentle morning breeze Engendered life And poets smiled like lunatics Come to me, woman of my dream And mould my rending heart Come to me, woman of my soul And give it respite from meditation Come to me procurer of my soul And haul me to your Eden, O bright Eternity! And she came to me, vendor of my soul And she came to me, woman of my doom And she came to me, O dark eternity 68 No embittered soul broke the damp Of salty sorrows as now I do Knowing one thing: beauty wears daggers. In The Toilet I come, Invisible Presence to your shrine in obeisance to your call bowel-crammed and mind-blistered with fevers from the world Squatted in the marble sanctuary consumed in a ritual of purgation of self and soul eyelids closed against the door to battered life and amidst the fretful farts and the gleeful groans dream piles upon dream dream piles upon dream till self and soul resume a dialogue and lines of verse come dancing in my eye singing songs of Truth, of Bliss Invisible Master Initiate though I go from hence chaste and pure let the jolting lines of prose sojourn so I can spread your precious gift in the eyes of the world. 69 W Wailing In The Jungle Will no one listen to the silent cries From shanties choked with th’offending midnight breeze The scythes of oppression whirling in the wind And the venom of corruption searing in plebian blood It is a cataclysm of terror and misery With slaves in tyrants’ garbs turned amuck Turned rodents in the barns of fruitful motherland Will no one listen to them cry No one listens to the tortured infant wail No one hears its pitying mother’s sigh No one heeds to the farm-farer’s groan in this desolate jugle The Jogglers of State are at banquet Browsing in foreign laps They will return like nabobs After our little wells are drained And swear that all is fine Though we chaff in our misery nevermore, Fuandem, nevermore nevermore the milky dawns of your shrine’s shores the rhythm of your gong drowns and the water of mighty Mungo dries and want of drink, the humble’s cry is life in death and death in life in my blind and bitter fatherland. 70 ...