Flying Barbets And Finches Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Where barbets fly, wait for blackbirds
to follow with veils on their crows.
Stand here and tell panting young men
to go back home to their burning houses.

Where tight-winged fire finches sail, run away
to green flames of grass gleaming
under the burning sun in a rocking couch.
Barbets and finches smolder after a stormy flame.

The sunflower beds down the valley
toss off no nooks and bowers for shelter,
but spin rising wallowing yellow frocks
drifting from end to end, with sprouting roses.
Dance. Twist. Flip over in yellow and red hue.

Barbet and finch say this is how
we spread wings and spray more yellow flowers
and splash polished peony and hibiscus shreds.

This is how we, birds and flowers, dance
on roofs. Wriggle with the winds
out of reeds carving out lip plates for a crackling
song. For the dirge sung with burnt lips.

(ii)

Where cardinals and scarlet macaws ignite
the sky with red shirts dangling through
red winds in red and yellow clouds, let a gale
shrug off flames from expanding shoulders losing chests.

Who planted and planted sunflowers
in beds and ridges of smoke flying down the slope
of a scream, where rivers dragged tails
to jumping banks, the red sun pouring its voice?

Through quiet corridors of bush after bush
hearts lip with no muzzle, no arrow from muttering lips,
as silence grows a eucalyptus tree, birds
diving out of its ballooned head in dreadlocks
to land in bowers of pine trees whimpering in the wind.

After scars and barnacles have settled
on the smoky faces young women chasing storms,
as they build walls to rise without a wide-armed door.

No windows stand in the storm
on their faces. Only hills and mountain shoot sky
and the orifice of a wet eye drowned

in a river, its babble life's new pace, from which
a red bird whistles: "In my grey ashes
and charcoal gown, clouds will cover me with rainbows".