Six Poems Robin S. Ngangom (bio) understanding I can understand on this virtual dayeven without smelling,let alone touching it. So,I'll not say a wordabout the sea giving up a toddlerI can even understandthis groundswell of pityas if humanity was testing the waters of feeling,after adapting a short brackish tragedy,despite pleas from the gentlest mourner not to usethe image of drowningbut only remember a child's smile,in an age whose only metaphysical worry is,"what can be saved?"trees, animals, or children, for instance,late after the mocking, "ecstatic destruction." forgetting When we became forgetfulWe cannot remember what gives us pauseOn days which seem to never end.To forget is to die once moreThrough Moses's Egypt to the Wuhan spectacle.Creatures, animate or notStill journey on bravely slighting bordersCoal, dazed refugees, torpedoes, mountain goats,Even as pestilence brokers have begun roaring:"The economy is dead!Long live the economy!" [End Page 124] We notice streets bereft of children,Luxury yachts for the first time whileA goods train leisurely flattensA curve of migrant workersAnd snow-crowned peaksSwim into view daily on grimy streets.We cannot mask an ineffable fearUnlike emperor penguins marchingIn a dignified line toward extinction. father on earth With a hobbling gaitmy father whips out his dickand pisses like a dog. He's 86 and lost his reason.Not quite, for when he loses his temperhe blurts out: "Dog's cunt."But the man who never prayedwhen I was a kidand asked us to burn his horoscopeis now humming hymns.What is the matter with him?Is it the strain of dementiawhich is supposed to run in the family?Is he penitent about his infidelities? I remember his gentle physician's handsthat mended my fractured fearsas a child,his joke about village dogsrefusing to bark at Rip Van Winkle,his histrionic tale of Bremen's musicians. My mother, long-suffering and prejudicedcould never catch a wink when he shoutsin the dead of night as his demons needle him.But she often holds his hands and caresses themand talks to him as one would to a child.She's been doing this for years now.So it must be love.My father now mimics my little daughter.In fact, he is the son I never fathered. [End Page 125] funerals and marriages I've stopped going to marriages and funerals. Any demonstration ofgrief or joy unnerves me. Solemnity withers me and dark sartorialelegance moves no one. It's not that I've forgotten kindness or to wishpeople happiness if they can find it. I could help the bereaved furtivelyafter the mourners have eaten and left. I have become truly unsociable. I can't fathom why anyone would like to be comforted except by peoplethey love selfishly. You only need hugs and kisses from people who giveyou, when pressed, your morsel of flesh. I cannot be comforted, exceptby the woman I love illicitly. I often wonder about the efficacy of marriages and funerals. Couldit be because others are as worried, as I was during my own weddingfeast, that my friends would not show up for some mystifying reason?As regards funerals, I know that if the house of the dead cannot keepa demonic hold on me my absence will not make any difference. ButI don't want to be censured for not attending marriages or funerals. Iwish people would not invite me to weddings or bring news of an oldacquaintance's death. If I could I wouldn't attend even my own funeral. I remember the day I returned home, and without even seeing my fatherI went to my aunt's house when I heard my cousin had died during mylong absence. I tried to match my aunt's grief by trying to show sometears in my eyes but ended up sniffing like a dog. After that, my cousin'ssister, my other lovely cousin, in whose body...