Wall Of A Young Man Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for a dying Ambazonian kid)

(i)

Dry iroko wood
of shredded khaki men
stumbled against a wall,

a young man stretching out
his sparrowhawk wings
into rising barricades standing,

a hilly man rising
into a mountain taking in
arrows of slurs

and boots flung against
shards flying off a body

that only tore
their double-leathered shoes.


(ii)

A crack in the wall
swelled into a loud laugh.

He sat stroking
a hippo-sized family
sitting on his head

expanded into an elephant's back
riding slashed folks
drowned in marsh, creeping

under tortoises of wild weeds,
walls of a forest
growing into the hilly beams
of a lad shining
in the cloak of his wounds.

Arms round his neck
like a noose of love
from the woven sisal tethering

face to face, the young
hatching the old
with river-long fondles.

(iii)

Under the boots
of the cackling wooden men
he touched the sluice-gates
to burst out with him

into a downstream deluge
tossing him

into night-dressed hands
of death in a small round stone

squeezing him into a whimper
never to be telegraphed by birds
standing on tree branches.

O hardwood trees of men
with no branches
to stroke the cheeks of a wailing woman,
a river overflowing its banks.