Garland On A Swan Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I thought a sky flew
only cream flags,
but after an Ambazonian
family's home
had gone up in flames,

I saw a black-necked
swan rise from
a swelling rainbow arc
dressedin damask
and orange ribbons.

My eyes wandered
in a gold-adorned dark sky,
butthe bird had
quickly landed in a laky brook,

peeled-off silvery waters
clothing it with pearl splashes
of a stream's hands,

its legs tall lakeside grasses
completing a new
shady home for the floating swan.

(ii)

But the wailing family
left with sharp slithering
tails of lightning
cutting them through

still winced from the slashing
edge of pain growing
from decades of weaving life

with daffodil and flaxen
fibers - in a land of emerald
and fern sheathes
carpeted and hemmed in
by shamrock undergrowth -

out of the reedy limbs
ofashy metal flowers on a roof
now dressed in night,

its only bones graphite
stony clouds hanging over
folks with little flesh
to build up a new tower of hope.

(iii)

Over the swan floating
life in light films of water,
I saw a white
butterflysailing

over the bird. But the soft
wings of cinders
that sketched out ashy wings
of a flying flower

darkened into the spit
of that fire
that unclothed and splayed
an Ambazonian family
on a parched lawn tonight.