An Ode To Soyinkaresque.part 32

To capture the essence of Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, in a dense, lexical style, here is an initial selection of sonnets. 

Sonnet I: The Ogun-Patterned Forge

Labyrinthine weaver of the Yoruboid tongue,

Who scales the idiosyncratic heights of Idanre’s peak,

To wrest from granite silence the metal-rung

Of iron-willed justice the palavering meek

Dare not whisper. Oh, chthonic architect,

Who charts the transition’s gulf with visceral pen,

You stand as Ares’ sibling, soul-elect,

Amongst the pallid scribes and hollow men.

The grey-maned lion, thistled and grandly stark,

Unreels the atavistic spool of mythic thread,

To light the ossuary of the dark,

Where history’s unburied ghosts are fed.

Your syntax, a petroglyph of fire and bone,

Carves Lagos’ fever into eternal stone.

Sonnet II: The Prison’s Cryptic Parchment

In the circumscribed gloom of a concrete cell,

Where the hegemon’s shadow chokes the light,

You brewed a distillation out of hell,

And scribbled testament against the night.

No ink but the ichor of the defiant soul,

No paper but the mind’s unyielding leaf,

To keep the integrity of the person whole,

Beyond the reach of the uniformed thief.

You are the heresiarch of the status quo,

A liturgical force against the tyrant’s mace,

Whose rhythmic volubility makes flow

The hidden currents of a subjugated race.

The shackles rusted where your verses fell,

Transmuting to a chime the captive’s knell.

Sonnet III: The Nobel Laureate’s Lexicon

Polyphonic master of the tragic stage,

Where Elesin dances toward the twilight’s rim,

You trap the zeitgeist in a gilded cage,

Then burn the bars to satisfy a whim.

Your prose is a cataract of gold and gall,

A scabrous dance of wit and ancient lore,

That sounds the clarion to the festival

And kicks the bolted hinges of the door.

From Abeokuta’s soil to Stockholm’s hall,

The rhetorical thunder rolls across the plains,

A lexical titan standing broad and tall,

With metaphoric lightning in his veins.

The ikon of the word, in silver crowned,

Wherein a continent’s deep pulse is found.

To explore more of his specific plays or political activism, you can consult his bibliography through the Nobel Prize Official Site or the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange.