Here is the next sequence of five sonnets, plunging further into the lexical abyss of Soyinkaresque archetypes, Ogunian metaphysics, and the intertextual echoes of his prison ordeal.
XXVI. The Ulysses of the Crypt
Upon the stygian and peregrine tide,
He charts the Ulyssean arc of mortal woe,
Where carceral reefs and spectral furies hide,
And adamantine currents ebb and flow.
No Circean lullaby for the fettered ear,
But the cacophony of the hungry road,
He navigates the labyrinth of fear,
Discharging the ancestral and heavy load.
A shuttle weaving through the void's loom,
With fibers of defiance and of light,
To exhume the Word from the sepulchral tomb,
And shatter the opacity of night.
The lion's mannequin in the cell remains,
A titan unfettered by meretricious chains.
XXVII. The Ogunian Metallurgist
Amidst the conflagration of the forge,
Where Ogun wields the fulminating mace,
He carves the interpreters' primordial gorge,
And maps the labyrinthine pulse of race.
No obsequious scribe of atrophied decree,
He breathes the petrichor of ancient rite,
Transmuting chthonic myth to liberty,
A numinous beacon in the penumbral night.
The shuttle in the crypt weaves diaphanous thread,
Through solitary vaults of adamantine stone,
Where sepulchral silence by the word is fed,
And magnanimity ascends the throne.
Oh, leonine sage of Aké’s verdant soil,
Your lexis blooms from metaphysical toil.
XXVIII. The Season of Anomy
In the season of anomy, the earth recoils,
Before the draconian juggernaut of greed,
Where hegemony in venal coils,
Plants the vituperative and toxic seed.
Ofeyi seeks the Aiyéro purity,
Amidst the cacophony of shattered flesh,
A daedalian quest for synchronicity,
To escape the stygian and nefarious mesh.
The dentist wields a surgical resolve,
To extirpate the canker of the state,
While metaphysic riddles slowly solve,
The anatomy of violence and of hate.
Soyinka drafts the incendiary map,
To bridge the chthonic and the mortal gap.
XXIX. The Hamlet of the Kaduna Vault
He wears the Hamletian pallid mask,
In a prison of infinite space and gloom,
To undertake the unflinching task,
Of exhuming justice from the tomb.
The ghost of conscience stalks the amber wall,
Where vulture-priests intonate the lie,
He will not obsequiously fall,
But watch the hegemony slowly die.
With rhetorical cataphract and wit,
He shatters the draconian fetter's hold,
And in the crypt where shadows flit,
He finds the parchment for the bold.
The man dies in him who keeps the peace,
But Soyinka commands the soul's release.
XXX. The Nonagenarian's Incendiary Pen
The white mane of the lion glows,
Against the twilight of the modern stage,
While the maximalist lexis flows,
In vituperative and stately rage.
He is the sentinel of Abeokuta's hills,
The doyen of erudite dissent,
Against the kleptocratic wills,
On meretricious power bent.
From Stockholm's halls to Ibadan's sun,
His voice of vision shatters the lie,
A triumph that is never done,
Beneath the numinous and azure sky.
Long may the Kongi shuttle fly,
A sovereign bird that will not die.
Now we proceed with sonnets detailing his memoirs like Aké: The Years of Childhood, or explore the satirical theatricality of his early plays.
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