By Bate Besong
First Published in the ALA Bulletin (USA), Vol 27. Summer 2001 Nº3, pages 39-41
(For Alexandre Biyidi-Awala a.k.a Mongo Beti Eza Boto 1932-2001, waggoner of Les Deux Mères de Guillanume IsmaelDzewatama, futur camionneur)
Your history huts are made
of wild flower and sycamore a steel fort, defying:
Stop, Inquirer, look back and wonder…
who can dare the brazen symmetry
of Akometam mansecomb?
so long as the remembers
he’ll not: find the bottomless histories
of dungeons only;
so long as the remembers
he’ll not: find the bottomless histories
of dungeons only;
the wild cackle of hyaenas, corpsemine….
as long as he remembers; he’ll not: find
only the unwilted memory of creaking puppetry & rigged majorities
in a culture of terror profiteering
in his histories, he’ll find:
the clamorous|
defiance of decreed savagery
the pandemonium of crooked business
associates
and the giant mega-millions;
the pyramids of a Mameluke helms dog.
ah! Inquirer- as Akometam bloom flowers,
you’ll: find
and drunken and insidious air
screaming with bones which fold and die;
to the paralyses of a fugitive’s sigh…
guilt:
(was it a wrong turning I had taken?)
for, I too have crushed into silence
the daylight robbery of hands soiled
with heroes’ blood & ill- gotten gains (& chewed
the curd of complacency…)
to loose sight from pain
from the obsequies over the wall
of state torture, friend:
Come on and see come on and see…
for I too have exhumed the cadaverous past
long
worn its glorified ostrich mask,
and poured
the rubble
of its narcissistic muse
on my masquerader head…
have built:
poetries’ canaans
in obscurities which led
to the labyrinth of my own inertia
(all that gone with the wind now)
I too have
imprinted a century’s dark decade
(this, to the best of my ability)
hidden, in a curfewed song!
But you:
You wash the sky you impose upon it
A refulgent contribution
You speak to history, to the exile’s lonely
Sigh…
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