Perhaps, ask what a stone is for lizards: Eco-centric Poems by Nsah Mala

Remembering Big Bees in Mbesa

When we were young, we had many types of bees.
When dry seasons powdered the earth with dust,
There were big yellowish bees – ndehse bangnese,
Those not social to live in colonies, but as couples,
That burrowed into dry soft wood in the bushes,
And made a sweet yellow paste which we harvested
When we went to fetch wood. We often dated girls by
Offering them the sweet paste. Sometimes we ignorantly
Roasted and enjoyed their bulbous larvae back home.
Because they never stung us, we would catch some alive,
Bring them home, tie to long thread pieces & fly as planes.
There were also big black bees – ndehse fingnese,
That burrowed into planks and wood on our roofs.
They also made a sweet yellow paste,
But we couldn’t destroy houses to harvest it,
Except when our fathers had to renovate.
Facilitated by noisy zinc sheets on roofs,
They sometimes became boisterous bands,
Humming gentle melodies from their burrows
To entertain us by day, troubling our sleep some nights.

(—Aarhus, 26 May 2019)
Published in Tiger Moth Review, Issue 4 2020.

 

 The rural Kingdom of Mbesa viewed from the Njinagwa Mountain

Stone Language or What Stones Call It

I am a stone,
A rocky being.
Not only gravel.
Not only cement.

You can ask lizards
Who whisper messages to me
From the taps of their harmless heads
When they join me to eat sunlight.

You can ask birds
Who scratch messages into my body
With their harmless claws and beaks
When they perch on my head to savour air
Or to sing into the world, not only for humans.

You cannot guess the things we discuss
When lizards and birds visit me,
Not to crack me into gravel.
We speak in tongues
That confuse name-giving humans.
We speak in tongues that all-knowing
Humans cannot interpret. We communicate.

Even when alone,
I remain a stone
According to them,
Though they named me
Without asking how
I call myself. Remove the name stone
From me and I still remain.
Or ask the birds how they call me.
Perhaps, ask what a stone is for lizards.
Will you?

(Agder, 27 September 2019), unpublished poem

 

Gross Destructive Progress (GDP)

We’re woodpeckers in the Amazon Basin
Swimming in smoky oceans up in the sky
As our pecked homes collapse into ashes
Along with friendly tortured trees below
Furious flames flash all over the forests
But human eyes are turned away
Neither watching nor wrestling
To block bloodbaths in Bolivia
They’re counting cash in Cana-Fornia
They’re glued to GDP scales on screens

Here in Australia’s Great Artesian Basin
We’re refugee antechinus exiled by fires
And human hunger into imagistic memories
As our homes disappear into smoke and rubble
Smoldering logs vanish with unknown species
But human eyes are turned away
Neither watching nor calming
Flaring tempers & flying rockets in Iraq
They’re surveying new Arabian oil fields
They’re glued to GDP scales on screens
We’re homeless gorillas from the Congo Basin
Running into bullets in endless palm oil fields
As our homes descend in flames of development
While floral and faunal screams fade into chaos,
Aquatic communities choke into plastic echoes
But human eyes are turned away
Neither watching nor ending
Killing sprees in Southern Cameroons
They’re speculating new prices for Angloil
They’re glued to GDP scales on screens

While our world wanes out in flames
Billionaires with white wines & whiskeys
On golden couches smile before screens
On golden couches smile before screens
Displaying World Bank GDP charts & graphs
None attentive to new Ecological GDP graphs
Cast by Ozone on the skins of giant pandas
Carved on melting ice and sprawling deserts
Where red lines originating from finite x-termini
Slope upwards and backwards to infinite y-infinitum

(Aarhus, 8 January 2020), unpublished poem

 

 

 

 

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The Congo Basin forest in Cameroon

Kola Nuts

Red, red nuts
from the high trees
in my father’s compound,
I miss you and I miss life.
He who brings kola nut,
Achebe wrote, brings life.
With a bite of you
animating my mouth,
I see your parents at home,
holding their leafy hands
round my father’s compound,
sheltering those birds
which are our alarm clocks.
I also see he who brings you
in fibre bags dangling under
foaming calabashes of palm wine
or nkang, escorted by buzzing bees
which produce our honey.
I also see the village soothsayer
frame your sweaters into five
pieces like your five lobes
and read the future on them –
as he throws them on the floor –
like doctors read from microscopes.

(Perpignan, 22 August 2017)

CONSTIMOCRAZY (2017, p. 38)

 

At the Washing Machine

When my dresses unfriend cleanliness,
here in Perpignan since my arrival,
I pack them into bags or plastic papers
and to the Washing Machine I am gone.

After feeding the cash-receiving machine
with coins as demanded, I load my dresses
into the Washing Machine and move
to a nearby bench where I surrender my buttocks
and lazily watch the machine spinning like Earth
round Sun. No rest for machine, no work for me.
No physical exercise, no conversation with Nature.
Only swiftness of machine like Man’s onto doom!
Except that sometimes I bury my worries
into books, books, books, and newspapers,
the best companions in individualized societies.
Back in Mbesa where I was born,
before my departure to others’ lands,
when our dresses became unclean,
we would pack them into bags or basins
and carry them to rivers like Ngwa, Fenkok…
Sometimes, we trekked with children
and women – babies fastened on their backs –
balancing washing basins on their heads
and chattering, chattering, or gossiping.
We would soak our dresses in river pools,
apply soap, tap them on smooth, flat stones,
wave goodbye to dirt as it sets to travel,
squeeze and spread them on nearby grass.
For heavy blankets, two or more people
would join forces to squeeze them
in perfect communism and cheerfulness.
While elderly persons concentrated on washing,
some children played with and in water,
swimming, catching crabs and tadpoles
and selecting bullet stones for bird hunting.
It was admirable communion with Nature,
full of physical exercise, warding off diseases
and laziness as well. After chatting, planning,
washing, drying and sometimes dating,
we would baptize ourselves in cold baths
in the rivers before retiring to face the future.

(Perpignan, 23 September 2016)

CONSTIMOCRAZY (2017, pp. 40-41)

 

I Am an Aquatic Emissary

I am an aquatic emissary dispatched by water creatures
In Yaoundé, Douala, Limbe, Bamenda and Bertoua.
Our aquatic vision is ecological consternation and chaos.
And I’m out to preach the Good News of Prudence
Like Pentecostals preaching the Good News of Signs.

I must warn city dwellers to repent and refrain from
Dumping refuge and toxic waste into water bodies.
I must notify councils that most city toilets end in waters.
I must inform dozy Yaoundé fellows of broken bottles in streams.
We are sick and tired of dumped human corpses and foetuses.

When our aquatic medics visit upland forests for medicines
To cure our intoxicated young ones, they meet artificial deserts
Created by the same humans who send toxic invaders to our seas.
Enough of this ecological xenophobia against fish, frogs, crabs…!
I urgently summon all humans to tables of ecological diplomacy.

(Mbankolo, 27 April 2015)
If You Must Fall Bush (2016, p. 50)

 

Screens and Greens

Screens everywhere, everywhere screens.
Greens almost nowhere, almost nowhere greens.

Growing laptop screens, aging valley greens.
Growing desktop screens, aging plain greens.
Growing TV screens, aging urban greens.
Growing tabloid screens, aging plain greens.
Growing smartphone screens, aging plateau greens.
Growing online course screens, aging offline greens.

Screens everywhere, everywhere screens.
Greens almost nowhere, almost nowhere greens.

(Mbankolo, Ascension Thursday 14 May 2015)
If You Must Fall Bush (2016, p. 51)

 

 

Nsah Mala is a poet and writer from Mbesa, Cameroon. He writes in Iteanghe-a-Mbesa, English, and French. He has published five poetry collections: Chaining Freedom, Bites of Insanity, If You Must Fall Bush, CONSTIMOCRAZY: Malafricanising Democracy, and Les Pleurs du mal (French). In 2016, he won the Ministry of Arts and Culture Short Story Prize in Cameroon and le Prix Littéraire Malraux in France in 2017. As a writer for children, his published picture books include: Andolo – the Talented Albino (English), Andolo – l’albinos talentueux (French), and Le petit Gabriel commence à lire (French). He translated the picture book Be a Coronavirus Fighter (Yeehoo Press) into French as Un Combattant du Coronavirus in March 2020. Nsah Mala’s picture book, What the Moon Cooks, will be published in spring 2021 by POW! Kids Books (USA).

 

Nsah Mala on a horse in front of the ocean in Lagos (Nigeria)

 

Cover image: Nkok-Ibalavin hill in Mbesa, photo taken by Nsah Mala, as all others in the article.