XVI. The Stockholm Apotheosis
Upon the Scandinavian glacial throne,
Where boreal winds meet Yoruba fire,
The paragon of Aké stands alone,
To pluck the empyrean, golden lyre.
No obsequious oration for the Great,
But a vituperative and incendiary speech,
Against the kleptocratic gears of state,
And the hegemony within our reach.
He brought the Ogunian mace of iron truth,
To shatter Eurocentric pedantry,
Reclaiming the efflorescence of his youth,
In the annals of global history.
A numinous laureate of stately grace,
Who etched the contours of a sovereign race.
XVII. The Abiku’s Perennial Loop
The Abiku straddles the liminal stair,
A spectral infant of recurrent breath,
With shackles wrought of unsubstantial air,
Defying the finality of death.
Soyinka tracks the mercurial ghost,
Through the labyrinth of the mortal womb,
A clandestine and ephemeral host,
Who mocks the stricture of the silent tomb.
In the chthonic interstice he dwells,
Between the temporal and the void’s embrace,
Weaving polysyllabic and ancient spells,
To map the vicissitudes of race.
An irrepressible and wandering will,
Whose vitality remains undiminished still.
XIX. The Road of Metaphysical Ruin
The tarmac is a sacrificial tongue,
That laps the petrol nectar of the fast,
Where Professor’s cryptic hymns are stertorously sung,
To make the ephemeral moment everlast.
He seeks the Word amidst the twisted steel,
The quintessence of the final sleep,
While Ogun drives the heavy, iron wheel,
Through chasms and ravines abyssal and deep.
The Murano limps in purgatorial wait,
A vessel for the divine and the vile,
Between the temporal border and the gate,
With a macabre and enigmatic smile.
Soyinka maps the accidental shrine,
Where the human and daemonic intertwine.
XX. The Lion’s Nonagenarian Vigil
The white-haired titan of the Ijegun woods,
Remains the unrelenting scourge of kings,
Refusing the comfort of the pious hoods,
To speak of visceral and weighty things.
His diction is a cataphract of might,
A dense and maximalist decree,
To pierce the opacity of the gathering night,
And guard the shrine of human liberty.
From Abeokuta to the ends of earth,
His voice resonates with ancestral thrum,
Affirming the sanctity of mortal birth,
And the rhythm of the universal drum.
Long may the Kongi leaping word be heard,
As the limitless and unfettered bird.
Now we proceed with sonnets detailing his memoirs like You Must Set Forth at Dawn, or perhaps a set on his activism against military dictatorships.
XVIII:The madmen and the specialists
In the asylum of the shattered state,
Where Dr. Bero wields the scalpel cold,
And mutilated souls anticipate,
The cannibal logic of the bold.
Soyinka probes the pathological core,
Of human depravity and war's despair,
Where truth is but a fragmented lore,
And metaphysics dissolves in poisoned air.
The Old Man laughs a dissonant refrain,
Against the hegemony of the blind,
Dissecting the anatomy of pain,
And the dark crevices of the mortal mind.
A visceral indictment of the Age,
Written on the sepulchral and bloody
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