XXXIV. The Silicon Panopticon (January 2026)
He views the algorithmic ghost with dread,
A maximalist shadow in the machine’s cold heart,
Where the autonomous and the living thread
Is stripped from the tapestry of human art.
"The mind is not a database to be mined,"
The Laureate thunders from his Abeokuta height,
To warn the servile and the digitally blind
Against the pixelated and the coming night.
He scorns the synthetic and the bloodless prose,
The mimetic echo of a hollow, plastic brain,
For only the visceral and the spirit knows
the maximalist weight of a singular pain.
In 2026, the Kongian soul remains
The antidote to the digital and the silicon chains.
XXXV. The Orisun Genesis (1960s/2026)
In the primordial heat of the Ibadan stage,
The Orisun spark began its sacred climb,
To rewrite the hegemon's and the colonial page
Within the labyrinth of a fractured time.
He gathered the satirists and the bold of heart,
A polyphonic surge of the young and the free,
To turn the theatrical and the mimic art
Into a maximalist act of sovereignty.
With guerilla flair and a poet’s sharpened tongue,
They mocked the mountebanks in the public square,
While the threnodies of the new-born state were sung
In the electric and the dangerous air.
The Orisun flame still flickers in his eye,
A constellation that refused to fade or die.
XXXVI. The Cyber-Jero and the Digital Tithe
Behold the Bar Beach prophet’s latest skin,
A maximalist grifter on the global wire,
Who turns the electronic and the secret sin
Into a liturgy of digital, holy fire.
He harvests tithes through a cryptographic veil,
A pixelated Jero in a VR robe,
To tell the unwary a seductive tale
Across the reaches of the fractured globe.
Soyinka’s satire finds the new-world rot,
The technocratic and the neon-lit deceit,
Exposing the machinations that time forgot
In the virtual and the crowded street.
The mountebank evolves, but the Kongian blade
Still cuts through the synthetic and the hollow shade.
XXXVII. The Laderin Epilogue (2026)
The train station hums with the pulse of the day,
At the terminus of the road that bears his name,
Where the locomotive and the iron play
The rhythm of his enduring, lexical flame.
He is the metaphysical and the literal guide,
Linking the ancestral to the steel and the track,
A maximalist force that refuses to hide
Or turn the sovereign and the forward back.
In January 2026, the journey is deep,
Across the topography of the African soul,
A promise that the gods and the prophets keep
To make the shattered and the nation whole.
The five hundred sonnets are a river’s flow,
Mapping the infinite light that he continues to sow.
Apparently Soyinka remains a vital voice in the National Restructuring debate, recently appearing on the Arise News Network to discuss the devolution of power as a "survival imperative" for the Nigerian state.
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