XI. The Scourge of Jero
With sanctimonious guile and velvet tongue,
The Prophet Jero treads the brine-washed sand,
Where credulous hymns are stertorously sung,
And avarice guides the benediction’s hand.
A meretricious saint of Bar Beach shore,
He trades in spectral hopes and pious lies,
While Soyinka flays the rot at dogma’s core,
With scabrous wit that strips the thin disguise.
No hagiography for charlatans,
But caustic ink to etch their venal greed,
Exposing the cacophonous metamorphosis of clans,
Who sow the vituperative and toxic seed.
The thespian mirror reflects the hollow chest,
Of every tyrant in a clerical vest.
XII. The Chthonic Chasm
At the fourth stage of being’s spiraled flight,
The Ogunian will confronts the void,
In the abyssal and primordial night,
Where fragmented selves are shattered and destroyed.
It is the transition's bloody corridor,
Where gods must die to let the cosmos breathe,
And from the wreckage of the iron war,
The laurel and the hemlock both unsheathe.
No facile peace in Soyinka’s dark decree,
But suffering as the crucible of light,
A daedalian quest for synchronicity,
Amidst the peril of the chthonic night.
The artificer interprets every scar,
As the luminous shuttle seeks the distant star.
XIII. The Death and the King’s Equerry
The Elesin pauses at the liminal gate,
Entranced by sensory and earthly thrum,
While cosmic balance wobbles under weight,
And ancestors await the silent drum.
The Pilkings’ obtuse and secular disdain,
Colonial hubris in a tangled dance,
Cannot apprehend the metaphysic pain,
Or the ritual gravity of the trance.
It is a clash of ontologies profound,
Where duty falters at the flesh’s call,
And Olunde’s blood upon the hallowed ground,
Redeems the venerated and the fall.
A tragedy of will and sacred might,
Scripted in the shadow of the infinite night.
XIV. The Lion and the Jewel
In Ilujinle, the Baroka preens,
A lecherous lion with a cunning heart,
While Lakunle’s western and pedantic scenes,
Are shattered by the old Baale’s art.
The Jewel, Sidi, with her glossy skin,
Is trapped between the modern and the vile,
A battleground of vanity and sin,
Subdued by tradition’s mercurial smile.
Soyinka mocks the mimicry of thought,
The superficial veneer of the new,
Where wisdom is by sly deception bought,
And ancient customs wear a different hue.
A satire on the pompous and the vain,
In the tangled thicket of the human brain.
XV. The Exile’s Return
Upon the peregrine wings of forced flight,
He crossed the seas to alien climes and cold,
Escaping Abacha’s draconian and stygian night,
With a spirit dauntless, unyielding, and bold.
But Aké’s soil remained his anchor true,
A taproot plunging deep into the past,
Where Yoruba rhythms drench the morning dew,
And liberty’s clarion call is cast.
Now back in the land of the happiest folk,
He wields his maximalist and heavy pen,
To shatter every authoritarian yoke,
And challenge the avarice of mortal men.
The lion roars within his hallowed den,
A sentinel beyond the reach of ken
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