Going Home Drumming Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(Ode to the smoking gods of Mosi Oa Tunya)


(i)

O sapphire-lined
cyan cloud
rising into a gown of silky
cornflower air,

a cerulean ceiling lying
on air
like a flat-edged hat,
as sky sings with a bird.

On earth's floor,
a shoe bill flaps
silver wings of sky,

tosses off
cream feathers of air.

Blows into a soft
humming hornet
thickening
into a deeper, louder

voice, a contrabassoon
on the Kalene Hill.

And a body of water
takesoff bicycling
on a whirring
saddle honking in a low tone
for a stretched-out ride -

a trip down
a flowing swelling belly
into the home

of the gods
igniting flames of rainbow
over Mosi Oa Tunya,

O deep sinking cave
breathing, choking,

sneezing and coughing
out flint smoke
to brush off
tails of a hanging,
rolling firmament.

(ii)

O staggered tapping
gods of water
on leather, a drumming
mumbling spree,

you've have settled here
over a bonfire
swooshing out smoke

shot up from a trench
in a deep
humming gorge
sinking, sinking

into red earth's mantle
growing
scarlet flowers of a fire.

(iii)

Is this the bouquet
tossed up
from a scooped-out bed
dressed in sheets
of smoky flames?

On your thousand-
mile trip crooning
down from Kalene Hill

between shamrock banks
waving green ribbons
of palmate
and pinnate leaves,

drunk crickets
and Lilliputian insects
blow into flutes

and clarinets
by a rocky floating hippo.

(iv)

O aster flowers
and flaming cactus
burning
into a swirl of love

to rise up
with flaming match sticks
of stroking butterflies,
the clucking

steering a parade of hue
to drive home
that love once missing
over the bronze
skin of a flattening lake

spreading out a sheet
to rock me to sleep

through a night of trumpets
from ambling elephants
playing a digging bass,
while the drums of Mosi sink
even deeper.