Night Lands With Butterflies Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Rattling, popping times
mold a dark rock of night
woven into birdwings
hovering butterflies
stitched into a thicker night.

Night has landed
with a common mormon
trailed by the postman
with enough pollen

in the mail to flower night
with a mourning cloak
sailing with a drizzling dawn
thickening back
into a burnt cooled tinder.

(ii)

How black pollen sprays
a deeper night down
a corridor of faded stars.

The horizon's edges
burn with tortoiseshells
stitching themselves
into another dawn's

glowing red admiral spilling
a darker crimson, as sky
bleeds with a rising sun
sheltering in a distant nest.

But how the sun in its
hiding has burnt air into
a brown gulf fritillary
wearing a silver-spotted
dancing skipper's cloak.

How darker will skies
grow, muzzles shooting out
more jet black butterflies
to swim with black fish
in a wet drizzling night.

(iii)

How rocky hands of war
darken night with coal-
stained palms of night,

from a smoky fire of darkness
full of butterflies losing
their soft stroking wings
to spirals of rocky palms.

O flickering sharp-nailed fingers
from stitched palmate palms
rubbed against threads
of common sooty-wings,

you weave thicker black pullovers
of night worn by women
and children in mole holes.
But light screens of eyes grow
from orisons rolling with the stars.