A Pigeon By A Leaking Pipe Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Sons of the land, sons born
of a banjo's thunder
when a trombone is swallowed
by a crater's rumble.

As leaves' edges devour
whispering fleeing birds

O Kukwa and Yongha
O arms of stone
warmed up and heated

by a leopard's mouth
to handle a forefather's spear
with a fur-gloved hand
gripping with claws and paws

when trees have no mouths,
the pigeons melted off
a round flattened tree dressed
in a nylon of sun.

(ii)

This spear of water
shot out of this bullet-pierced pipe
spins a widow's bleeding face

flushing out a tank
of pain too heavy for a narrow
pillow-squeezed haze

counting a sun's blinks
on the polished back
of a large stone sticking out

from a mountain
by a broken pipe carrying
a quiet trotting pigeon,

its eyes brighter than the silver
flowing out
of a widow's dripping tap:

Trot on, pigeon trot on
with the piercing rays
of a smile from a man lost
in the deep bushes
for one month on fast wheels.

(iii)

O Kukwa O Yongha
fallen from tall hills of yourselves
nobody can climb.

O my sons melted
in a cackling popping jungle
of hawk eyes
jumping out of lurking hands
with no shadow,

when the sun is a hole
in a mother's chest,
the only cave with more space

for rivers, in which grief
in ashes and soot can take a bath

before the sun is swallowed
by a horizon behind Mount Fako.