Brook Of Blood Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Brook of blood

Meander through, warm brook, to the marsh.
Your song sinks where ancestors thrive:
Let your quiet voice be subdued by songs, brash,
From barbets taking over bowed branches
Their trees whistling through winds, as time prances.

Slither, slither on through garrulous stones
Their mouths murmuring about the bones
Of ancestors who defended the land of the boa,
Where hills rising to the sky still tower
To heights into which ambitious cuckoos dive.

Flow through, gentle brook, your voice, centuries
Of song by shrubby trees, standing sentries
Alert to the constant call of echoes past in masks,
The color of scars left by the grueling tasks
Your people carry out, leaving perpetual blood,
Its fire the thick flesh of will never gored.