Grasshopper From Fodder Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Out of dead grass
piledover its grave
of oldmushy
leaves, a grasshopper

leaps higher
than a horse snorting
and whinnying
by its sleeping fodder.

The insect lands
on a breaking stem
whisked off
by a heavy-handed wind

in a fading whirr,
intoa deep culvert.

Silence crowns
the lawn carrying the horse,
as it walks, backing off
to snort again and again.

And as roaring
winds over the fodder
grow stronger,

the horse's voice climbs
to a stuttered roar
amid a chain of snorts,
as a fast wind
squeals on flying dry leaves.

(ii)

Rain in stony drops
and swinging tilted silvery
ropes of thick showers
flog banana stems
hardly sniveling,

as the stallion grows
into a roaring lion,
sending chills through
a herd boy
buried in his silence,

the ranch's owner
dressedin slashes
of a frown rolling down his cheeks
like a slithering snake.

But it stops raining,
the colorful trajectory
of the grasshopper
shot up from the culvert

is sketched
in a smooth curve
cut off
by a rising new mound
of fodder.

breathing out the same
grasshopper,

which wriggled little
with the rain's flagellation,

as the skipping horse
groaned loudest
under the whipping showers,

as the grasshopper
clung to its green fodder.