Sonnet IV: The Kongi-Architect of Power
Behold the monolith, the autarch’s stone-cold face,
Where Kongi weaves his grim, megalomaniacal spell,
A scaffolding of ego in the public space,
To build a heaven on the floor of a totalitarian hell.
The cadence of the march, the regimented breath,
Where dialectics serve as shackles for the mind,
And every syllable is harvested by death,
To leave the parched and hollowed soul behind.
He drinks the fermented vintage of his own decree,
A solipsistic god in a tinsel-bright diadem,
While the starved masses, in forced eulogy,
Are crushed beneath the petrified hem of his hem.
Oh, satiric mirror, cracked and sharp and wide,
Exposing the putrescence the marble sought to hide.
Sonnet V: The Ismite’s Feast of Dust
In the thicket of the state’s reified desire,
The Ismites gather for the sacramental crumb,
To dance around the incendiary pyre,
And beat the atavistic rhythm of the drum.
The Ideologue distills the protoplasmic word,
Into a viscous poison for the common well,
Until the discordant shriek of truth is heard,
Clanging like a leper’s warning-bell.
You, Soyinka, catch the spittle of the Great Reformer,
And turn it into vituperative ink,
A theatrical storm, a metaphysical warmer,
To push the complacent mind toward the brink.
For when the dictator dons his messianic gown,
The playwright’s laughter brings the temple down.
Sonnet VI: The Harvest of Dead Tongues
What oblation shall the Aiyéró prophets bring,
To heal the canker of the usurper’s greed?
What threnody can the dispossessed sing,
When the plowshare breaks upon the iron seed?
The Kongi-myth is but a macabre masquerade,
A cacophony of power in a vacuous hall,
Where the grandeur of the past is renegade,
And the scullery of the future waits to fall.
You map the topography of the despot’s brain,
Its convoluted valleys and its arid peaks,
To find the calcified remains of human pain,
And give a resonant voice to him who never speaks.
The lexicon of justice is a double-edged blade,
By which the monstrous ghost of Kongi is unmade.
Now we proceed with more sonnets exploring the Metaphysic of the Road or perhaps the Satire of the Trials of Brother Jero?
No comments:
Post a Comment