By
Marinus Samoh YONG
Why disturb the real peace of the triangle
Sitting on the western lap of Mother Africa?
Why scheme, angle and juggle
The fate of this wealth in plethora?
Why grasp with gloved hands
And silent smoking double barrels
The overflowing oiled vessels
From our rich common sands?
Cameroes grows yet remains puerile.
Cameroes bleeds and remains docile.
Cameroes faints and remains fragile.
Cameroes dies yet remains tactile.
Her death, the strength of groveling imperialists
Her transience, the muscle of mindless men
The fruit of faithless extortionists
The glory of an octogenarian fiend.
Cameroes, in the casket made of the woods
From the dense tropical forest
On which stands the imperial boots
Is thought to be in rigid rest.
Cameroes, whose casket is oiled by the dark gold
From the western side of the south
In which the looters swim in its soothing cold
Is thought to rest with sewn mouth.
O Cameroes, if only they knew
That in your banana ballooned coffin
You too eat in patient wait for the new
And certain flow of fast falling dew
The moment you choose to closely pin
And let them exit with a dirge-like din.
Yong's poetry experiments with rhyme to the extent that the overriding images in this poem are best determined by the rhyme that provides additional meaning to "Corpse Cameroes" even where the words fail to do so...the simplicity of his language borders upon sheer duplicity, though with a paradoxical stink of intellectual probity as the poet strives in no small way to carve out a specific niche for himself in the wider sphere of Cameroon Anglophone poetry...Keep the flame aglow; BIG BUDDING POET!!!
Posted by: GWEDENG NGALAH | August 15, 2011 at 10:57 AM