The Trudging Shepherd Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for Most Rev. Fr. George Nkuo)

(i)

Egret in his cassock, he swims under
walloping and thwacking branches
through a hard swamp of earth, the world

floating with dry leaves on a film
of beams from the cloud-butchered sun
turning on limpkin taps to cry out pools

of water on his face. The water his feet splashes
in this militia-invaded wilderness,
where the screaming village burns, sapphire
and spinel petals in his head
weaving roses and lilies, along which he walks.

The shallow lake on hard earth sinks
the only boots that ride him through pot-holes
in the marbled floor of a jungle
tiled with pebbles and mouse-toothed cobblestones.

(ii)

His head is heavy with leopard-masked men,
who folded up and dragged off
a young quivering boy to find shelter
among bones woven into breathing withered flowers.

Like a file of ants glued to the smell
of death in swamps of blood, the boy's siblings crawled
to Mount Calvary, dripped twigs
from leaning sighing trees, custom-made crucifixes.

Egret in his cassock buttoning up wounds
from his head harboring bruises
hanging down from the roof his hat,
he springs on duck feet.

He trudges in a desert
of a street overcrowded with children
fully grown clawed eagles,
but flown into bushes
with elephant mothers sailing through wind.

(iii)

They crawled in files of ants, these toddlers
who rustled and whispered with leaves
in the deep woods armed with bulk, their mothers
walking houses carrying smoke
and soot that made face beam with night.

And head-geared women, carrying cornfields
on wilderness, curtained off
from gardens of the world, melted
into beaming lakes on faces,
in which swarms of people froze into buzzing bees.

Making nectar out of lakes
they carried on their faces and swam through
when springs dried up,

leaving a thirsty shepherd carrying a sacristy
on his mountain head
sunk into a deep valley swallowing burning houses
to flower furrows of wrinkles

on faces ploughed into eroded fields of husks,
a moon-lit carpet
harboring lying mouths laughing to light up
December skies
waiting to sing with a bleeding midnight.