Light From Clouds Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Open my wounds to see them
shine like a spray of sun
from a sky painter's pot, the pit spitting
out the fog and mist

of a morning sailing from mountains
and tree peaks to people wide bowls
with mumbling voices
on rattled drums in a thumping wind.

Open a bleached cloud upstairs
in the ceiling of ceilings
rising no more beyond towers pouring
down light from sun's
crowned trumpet in a vase of crystal light.

Cave out an uncleaned wound
of absence from the crane's piece of eye
gripping you in the contours of you,

only clay and shadow sticking out
a stoa on Epictetus' colonnade. On a mat
carrying cotton and alabaster sheets
of purity, snow birds flap wings in my heart's bowl
holding out through shades of air

with the sun's crystal-lined corona steering
time's wheel round a corner of night.

(ii)

The sun burns stains of a dark dawn and dusk
on an eclipse's bleached boundary,
where every cloud dissolves into the mirror
of a lake rippling into the standing
silhouettes of love rolled out in screens of sky.

Every flower is still, every bird
flapping cloudy wings on a span of air
dissolving arrows of absence shot
from clouds of light dissolving in the light etching
you out of a slab of memory
spinning the ripples and waves of your grin.