NOW YOU SEE ME

My body is pierced by bullets
And I am attended by a cloud of flies
My dignity has ran away from me
Had all of me just been lies?

Upon one Monday morning
A sunny, promising day
In witness of Buea mountain
All that I was fell away
I hear footsteps on shifting gravel
And a voice barely a whisper say
"It is only an old man."
The click of metal and sounds of life drift away

My body is pierced by bullets
And I am attended by a cloud of flies
My dignity has ran away from me
Had all of me just been lies?

I was once a young man
Fighting to make an honest living
With thoughts I'll live forever
Hustling the streets of Molyko
Where I met a lady, my stardust
Only yesterday was our golden jubilee
How quickly happiness turns to dust
Oh Martha they have killed me

My body is pierced by bullets
And I am attended by a cloud of flies
My dignity has ran away from me
Had all of me just been lies?

I was a taxi driver, husband and father
Who tried to give his family silver and gold
My youngest son now has a son too
Little Ndip is only three weeks old
He has a very large nose
So they named him after me
How I smiled when I heard that
Oh children they have killed me

My body is pierced by bullets
And I am attended by a cloud of flies
My dignity has ran away from me
Had all of me just been lies?

I find myself on the deck of a ship
Sailing towards the point where the sky gives the sea un bec
As land fades away into a line on the horizon
Someone by my side asks,  "Do you think life is fair?"
I don't care for the question
I only wish the living remember who I was

(An elegy for those killed in the restive Anglophone regions of Cameroon)