Mbella Sonne Dipoko

A Cameroonian Poet

Background Information

• Mbella Sonne Dipoko was born in 1936 in Douala, Cameroon. He began work for the Nigerian Broadcasting cooperation in 1958, but began living in France in 1960. He studied law at Paris University for a short period of time, but then devoted his life to poetry and painting.

Published works

• Many of his poems were published and read on BBC Africa Service.

• Mbella has published one volume of poetry, Black and White in Love, two novels and a play.

From My Parisian DiaryThirty centimes is all the money I have left

But am full of hope without knowing why.I laugh at the world and laugh at myselfSomething of a child at thirty-five.It has been a hard life since I ran out of cynicism And stopped selling for a commission Just any newspaper in the worldDeciding exclusively on pamphlets of the LeftBy which I am now earning death by installmentOn a starvation dietAnd the rent is long overdue.Surely this is not a way of earning a livingPeddling slogans of a better worldIn the garrison of troops armed to defend these cruel days.But the struggle must continueAnd we must open new fronts even in our dreams.

Copenhagen • It was foretold long ago

That after Noah's deluge The next destruction of the world Would be by fireAnd can't you feel the heat building up already, The global warming up? And so to fulfill the prophecy Copenhagen is going to be Just some more hot air Presaging the sparks that would turn Into the flames in which the world will be consumed And then out of the ashes of ecocide capitalism It won't be Christ on His second coming presiding On Judgment Day But Karl Marx returning like a revolutionary phoenix Out of the ashes of the busting bubbles Of the lopsided economies Of our over-heated world

Our History to pre-colonial Africa And the waves arrived.Swimming in like hump-backed diversWith their finds from far-away seas. Their lustre gave the illusion pearlsAs shorewards they shoved up mighty canoesAnd looked like the carcass of drifting whales. And our sight misled usWhen the sun's glint on the spear's bladePassed for lightningAnd the gun-fire of conquestThe thunderbolt that razed the forest. So did our days change their garbFrom hides of leopard skinTo prints of false lionsThat fall in tattersLike the wings of whipped butterflies.

Hawking Slogansan excerpt

• the sadness I sometimes feel Because I abandoned the front of smoking gunsFor the comfort of selling slogansIn the public place,I who used to used to think like Jomo Kenyatta didBefore age and the comforts of high office softened himInto embracing the British he had so valiantly foughtIn the names ‘of Mungoi and WamboiAnd all the dispossessed sons of Africa

Lovely Land

• You have to drive through Cameroon Say from Douala to Yaounde For you to realise that indeed Cameroon is That virgin every young man dreams of;For although the breasts to the country have been fondled By dirty old colonial masters The erection of their way of life was unable To penetrate the country Look at those hills that are here like breastsAnd there like massive buttocksAnd elsewhere like thick lips with a wooded valley in - between!Virgin land, your maidenhead is yet to be broken into by progress,Yet to be delved into by development making love to you With that passion of which only sons of the soil are capable;For they care,Loving you as only a good man can love his country

Our LifeAn ailing bird over the desert made its agony A song blown through the air

As at the oasisDrawers of water saidHow low it flies oh how touching its song

The winged hope that proved to be a dream(Masked our destiny with a black hood)

As in the citied we said the same prayersAs in the villages we espoused ancestral mythsTransmitting our frustration out life out mortalityTo the young country of tomorrow and day after tomorrowFlattering ourselves with the charity of the blood-donor’s love.

ExileIn SilenceThe overloaded canoe leaves our shores

But who are these soldiers in camouflage, These clouds going to rain in foreign lands?

The night is losing is treasuresThe future seems a mythWarped on a loom worked by lazy hands

But perhaps all is not without some good for usAs for the door of a shack a thousand miles away

The scaly hand of a child takes in greetingThe long and skinny fingers of the rain.

Questions

• 1: How do you see Mbella Sonne Dipoko’s worldview affected his poetry?

• 2: Where do you see his influence coming from?

• 3: What are Mbella Sonne Dipoko’s recurring themes?

Works Cited• http://www.palapalamagazine.com/2008/11/from-my-parisian-diar

y-a-poem-by-mbella-sonne-dipoko.html• http://www.palapalamagazine.com/2009/12/copenhagen-mbella-s

onne-dipokos-last-poem.html• http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/9206/Mbella-Sonne-Dipoko

.html• http://www.jstor.org/pss/2934447• http://www.palapalamagazine.com/2009/12/in-memoriam-mbella-

sonne-dipoko.html• http://www.cafeafricana.com/Poetry.html• http://www.dibussi.com/2007/09/exile-a-poem-by.html• http://jimbicentral.typepad.com/.a/

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