Nightmare: A Poem by Bernard Fonlon

I stood on the verge,
the verge of the cliff,
and gazed down the chasm
dizzy and black.
Libera me, Domine
de ore leonis,
de lacu profundo

I danced on the brink,
the brink of perdition,
the grim dance of death
ecstatic and fatal
Libera me, Domine,
de morte improvisa,
de poenis inferni

I struggled to flee
the lethal attraction
but it drew like a magnet
and I loved my undoing.
Libera me, Domine,
de morte eterna,
in die tremenda.

I floundered in mire,
the mire of the bog
that sucks into silence,
the silence of death.
Libera me, Domine,
ne absorbeat Tartarus,
ne cadam in Obscurum.

I sweated, I groaned,
the deeper I sank,
but like hogs in the filth,
I cherished the mire.
Asperges hyssopo
et ego mundabor;
lavabis, Domine,
et super nivem dealbabor.

I trembled to think
that this was the end,
that thus I was sinking
into ruin forever!
Cor mundum innova,
O Deus, in me,
et spiritum rectum
in visceribus meis.

I struggled to rise;
so firm was the will,
so weak were the limbs!
and I struggled in vain.
Libera me Domine:
spiritus, promptus,
caro, infirma!

I woke in the morning
and wondered and sighed;
I rose from the mire,
sadder and wiser.
Redde mihi, Domine,
tuam laetitiam,
in die lacrymosa.

O Safe and Unwary,
awake to your fortune!
keep far and forever,
from fenland and cliff.
Deus,
sine cujus numine,
nihil est in homine,
nihil, innoxium,
da rubor,
fer auxilium

BERNARD FONLON
Yaounde
March 1963

From Abbia: Cameroon Cultural Review #3
September 1963

Comments

[Ngalim Eugine Nyuydine]

Fonlon remains the greatest philosopher i ever met in terms of reading. You are a burning candle in my and many other people's lives.Even though you left this world long ago, you keep inspiring me. My self and my organization, the Cameroon Youths and Students Forum for Peace(CAMYOSFOP) are trying to emulate you.It is not all that easy but we are confident you recognizes our efforts. You are an inspirator.

[dzemo romuald]

We read this poem quite often in school. I remember it was one of the favorites poems of Fr. Gerald. The spiritual depth of Fonlon's utterance is equal to the saint's. A thing I admire reading him is the veracity, the frankness, the sincerity with which he touches and transcends reality bearing the banal things of life to a higher sphere.

This poem is nothing less of a mystical hymn which, though bears a sad and dismal tone, ends, nonetheless, in a cry of triumph. I learnt one thing from Fonlon; that no situation, how experience, nothing however bane and mean is without its own share in the economy of our growth. In our search for God, for meaning, for our very identity, there must be that consciousness that brings us to the conviction that everything can be a stepping stone lifting us to higher horizons.