SOYINKARESQUE

The blogger Ibikunle Abraham Laniyan in this pungent meter  pays   tribute to kongi while preserving his signature use of complex, "Soyinkaresque" vocabulary. The arrangement is streamlined into consistent quatrains (four-line stanzas) to mirror the weight of a classical ode.

O POEMS ABOUT WOLE SOYINKA (P.A.W.S.) stake my everlasting tribute for Soyinkaresque 

I

Zeitgeist wails before the iconoclast;

A repertoire of punsmith artesian wells,

Dazzling the groping, sun-blind mass;

Benighted in the gall of Gregorian swells.

II

In whose chaste forge were they welded—

Moulded to tangle, never to stand aloof?

From trenches, the golden pearl was heralded,

Under the weight of a dark-age roof.

III

A lonely bard of the Kongi harvest,

Wrought in the blind marvel of the abyss;

Gumption crested upon the wailing crest,

To brazenly outshine the matrix’s kiss.

IV

Hurled into promenades where the earth moans,

Disdaining the paradox of the pipedream;

We salute thee, for thy creed disowns

The ignoble fox and the hollow scheme.

V

On the sands of groveling timology,

Indelible landmarks remain un-impugned;

Enraptured by your bliss and ideology,

While singing earth remains out of tune.

VI

Grayhounds and babblers sing thy panegyric,

Romping through a bacchanalian landscape;

Where backwoodsmen, blunt and atmospheric,

Wheel-clamp the truth to prevent its escape.

VII

Hung on the savages and banalistic brats,

Pettifoggers amble on the honeypot’s edge;

Laggards and know-alls, like sewer rats,

Knuckle down their rap upon the ledge.

VIII

Hey presto! The Nobel came—jazzy and idyllic,

A dead silence fell for the ideologues;

The Byzantine sun, ancient and metallic,

Sings no more of confinement or fogs.

IX

Milestones romp into milestones yet again,

Though cantankerous lawns groan under intrigue;

Straddling the colossus, free from the stain,

The poet outruns the wailing wall’s fatigue.

X

Neither jejune nor jested by the dearth,

He averts nature’s jibes and jocular stings;

"Wole Osho-yi-mi-ka," cries the crying earth,

"When shall we rejoice in what a new dawn brings?"

XI

The ballboy replied to the oracle’s plea:

"Send me, I shall go—your alumnus, your shadow."

Thus began the banter of the PAWS to be,

Before the grenadier exited the meadow.

XII

"Will you find momentum to wallop the crowd?

To betray the lords of lucre and their greed?"

In the public square, the oaks have bowed,

And the prostitutes of logophobia lead.

XIII

Stampedes of flotsam have gone berserk,

Until the sentry dogs return from their exile;

The sands of Sahara where the prowlers lurk,

Make the singing earth sing only in vile.

XIV

Flee from the jungle to till the parched field,

Herald the return of the greyhound’s power;

In that gazebo, where the truth is revealed,

Receive your wreath and your bouquet of flowers.