The Elusive Truth Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In the jade black clouds
light sticks out its shadow eyes,
which blink but swirl
into lead and pebble amid smoke.

Night thickens over
a crawling ant of light,
only a head
and petiole ringing a bell.

Only antennae and legs
flips out dot after dot,
stretch out a dash tilted
into a gliding slash
and a dim moon head.

But we still cannot see
Anybody. Nobody
in the dark cloud darkening.

Somebody crawls, flips over,
but no abdomen
wearing an ashy skin.

But oil and charcoal clouds
swipe through
with dark grey fingers
in the blown-out night and no whisper
cuts a gripping silence.

(ii)

In the rowdy congregation
of night patches only
stains and flecks of the hiding rat
play a faint harmonica,
fiddle with a clarinet's voice

only to see Mr. Trombone's ear.
No his ear sticks out
helices, but no aircraft
thaws out its full shouldered body
in clouds of shifting fog.

In the nimbus only night swells,
dawn hidden over
the hills growing into a forest
of tall palm trees.

Tall eucalyptus and pine trees
taking over. Growing
into towers and towers.
In the meeting eyes dart
at each other like flying arrows.

Eyes land at each other
like crawling centipedes,
eyebrows growing into grass
and creeping undergrowth.

(ii)

Under a faint moon,
a thick gray cloak
in a cloud of expanding smoke
running into the walls
of fattened night,


but the tiny streak of light
last seen crawls off, a white ant
floating on an anchor cloud,

And the beige insect
only hangs over a black hearth,

no flame yet to shoot out
that gray ant of ash, until
the truth sinks into a midnight crater.

Folks at the congregation
shriek and yell out
they can see only a blue bird,

but the head of a starling
sneaks into the hands
of dark Neptune

until a thief dressed in sun
brandishes a sharp lance,
cutting off truth's silhouette
that is lost fleeting like a star.