Bridge Of Brown Dogs Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

How shall breathing folks rise
back from of temporary graves?

How shall cocoon-hidden
dudes creep out of ashes and soot,

How shall quietly snoring prisoners
catch back paced breath
under broken bricks and melted tinder,

their new charcoal blankets
still choking them
and scrubbing them with crab hands?

(ii)

When shall they leap and creep
from abandoned boreholes
where they've thirsted

only for air? Drunk with streams
and silvery tributaries,
their salty sweat still dripping,
how shall they flee with broken limbs?

(iii)

How shall they escape,
as culverts open their mouths
too widely to spit them out
in their shouting outfit squeezed

into specks and chunks of debris
and strayed silt from streets
flowing with wind-drifted dust,

flying scraps from kiosks
and old newspaper stalls
colorfully attired refugees

crawling and wriggling
and cartwheeling
out of holes and tunnels

to earth's rising and leveling
floors of pebbles and gravel?

(iv)

How shall they sneak out
out of mole holes, as they explode

into air with starry teeth
and squeeze their way out
in floating boubous?

The hills bark and growl
with reeds howling and snarling in winds,

as brown as reeds and tall
ginger shrubs parade in
zigzagging and straight rows

towards grasses hurling spears
at a cinnamon
and umber burning sky.

(v)

There's also too much bronze fur
flying through brown grass
and sandstone and flaxen reeds
melting into the hue of brown dogs.

Banana and bronze heat waves
drip and tumble on the skin
of the brown rolling hills, the only
bridge to safety of trapped refugees.

They'll crawl out at windy dawn,
guarded by the hills' barking dogs.