Sonnet I: The Ogunian Architect
Incarnate essence of the iron-wrought lord,
A silken-maned coryphaeus of the stage,
Who plucks the paralipses from the hoard
Of history's unwritten, bleeding page.
From Aké’s mission-mists, a precocious seed,
Through Leeds’ grey fanes, his intellection grew,
To harvest polysemous tropes that bleed
The vermilion ink of ancient truths made new.
He stalks the interstices where gods and man
Collide in thaumaturgic ritual dance,
A lexicographer of the Yoruba clan,
Defying every tyrant's dark advance.
With silvered crown and gnostic iron-will,
The lion-voice commands the silence still.
Sonnet II: The Cryptic Shuttle (The Prison Years)
A solitary thrum in granite halls,
Where sepulchral silence rots the waking mind,
He etched his glossolalia on the walls,
While "The Man Died" in those who stayed behind.
No obviating cell could quench the fire,
Of a thaumatrope spinning justice from the gloom;
He wove a shuttle on a phantom lyre,
Escaping the cenotaph of his own tomb.
The epistemology of the "Oppressive Boot"
Remains indifferent to the wearer's hue;
He struck the authoritarian at the root,
With vituperative verse that rang so true.
From Idanre’s peak to prison’s lightless pit,
The percipient soul remains quite un-unknit.
Sonnet III: The Dramatic Synthesis
In "Death and the King’s Horseman," worlds divide,
A clash of cosmologies—metaphysical and stern;
Where Elesin’s ritual-blood is cast aside,
And Western hylozoism fails to learn.
He crafts a polyphonic tapestry,
Where "The Road" leads through the aksident of fate,
A satirist of "The Interpreters" decree,
Who mocks the comprador at every gate.
With "Chronicles" from land of "Happiest Folk,"
He flays the kleptocratic soul of state,
Beneath the maximalist and lexical cloak,
Lies the unadulterated truth of weight.
The laureate of the "Drama of Existence" stands,
With Yoruba thunder in his weathered hands.
Key Concepts and Works Featured:
Aké: The Years of Childhood: His celebrated memoir of early life.
Ogun: The Yoruba deity of iron and creativity, central to Soyinka's personal and literary mythology.
The Man Died: His searing account of solitary confinement during the Nigerian Civil War.
Death and the King’s Horseman: His masterwork exploring the tragic conflict between Yoruba ritual tradition and British colonial intervention.
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth: His 2021 novel, a biting satire of modern Nigerian political corruption.
Would you like more sonnets focusing on a specific literary period, such as his early satirical plays or his later political memoirs?
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Wole Soyinka | Biography, Plays, Books, Nobel Prize, Famous Works, & Facts | Britannica
Wole Soyinka (born July 13, 1934, Abeokuta, Nigeria) is a Nigerian playwright and political activist who received the Nobel Prize ...
Britannica
Analysis of Wole Soyinka's poem Night - Facebook
Night by Wole Soyinka The poem presents Night as a powerful, almost human presence that overwhelms the speaker. It is not just a t...
Facebook
The Man - Wole Soyinka Online
About Wole Soyinka. Wole Soyinka is a world-renowned writer, rights activist, polemicist and Nobel Prize Laureate. With a career s...
Wole Soyinka Online
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40 minutes ago
Sonnet IV: The Satirist’s Scalpel
Behold the sharlatan in priestly gown,
Where "Brother Jero" ply’s his velvet snare;
A thaumaturge of the beach-side town,
Who weaves a liturgy of thin, salt air.
With "The Lion and the Jewel," the dance begins—
A pedagogue outmatched by ancient guile,
Where Baroka, the wily forest-lord, wins,
Through the labyrinthine depths of a hunter’s smile.
See "Kongi’s Harvest" rot on stalks of pride,
A megalomaniacal feast of state,
Where orthodoxy and the ego ride,
Toward the eschaton of a bitter fate.
He mocks the comprador and mandarin alike,
With epigrammatic steel, prepared to strike.
Sonnet V: The Nihilist Abyss (Madmen and Specialists)
From out the sepulcher of civil strife,
Emerges Bero, the specialist of bone;
Who harvests the atrophied remains of life,
Upon a Manichean and blood-soaked throne.
The "Old Man" chants the gnosis of "As,"
A tautological and hollow creed,
Where cannibalism is the looking-glass,
Reflecting the voracity of human greed.
The mendicants—a chorus of the maimed—
Perform their macabre and limping rite,
By authoritarian whim and malice tamed,
Beneath a sun that sheds a cadaverous light.
In this absurdist and dark pharmakon,
The ontological mask is finally drawn.
Sonnet VI: The Dawn of Memory (Later Memoirs)
He sets his course by "Ibadan’s" hazy glow,
A voyage around "Essay" through the past,
Where "Penkelemes" and political tempests blow,
And "Aké’s" innocence is eclipsed at last.
"You Must Set Forth at Dawn," the traveler cries,
Across the topographies of exile's pain,
Under the harmattan of a thousand lies,
To find the primordial and red-earth rain.
He bears the "Burden of Memory," a heavy frieze,
Of "Forgiveness" and its recalcitrant cost,
Through "The Open Sore" of national disease,
Where the sovereignty of the soul is lost.
The Nobel lion, with mercurial pen,
Exposes the machinations of mortal men.
Key Themes and References:
The Jero Plays: Satirical works mocking religious hypocrisy and "spiritual" exploitation.
The Lion and the Jewel: A classic clash between the "modern" schoolteacher Lakunle and the traditional Bale, Baroka.
Kongi's Harvest: A sharp satire on African dictatorship and the cult of personality.
Madmen and Specialists: His most pessimistic play, exploring the dehumanization of war and the "specialist" who treats humans as mere biological matter.
Later Memoirs: Works like Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years and You Must Set Forth at Dawn which detail his life in political activism and exile.
Would you like to explore a specific mythological archetype Soyinka employs, such as the Abiku child or the Dionysian nature of Ogun?
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Madmen and Specialists: A Play (Spotlight Dramabook) - Goodreads
Soyinka is something of a Nigerian Beckett, so needless to say I had virtually no idea what was going on in this play. By the end ...
Goodreads
Summary and analysis of Madmen and Specialists by Wole Soyinka
Madmen and Specialists, written by Wole Soyinka in 1971, is a politically charged play composed during and after the Nigerian Civi...
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Wole Soyinka | Biography, Plays, Books, Nobel Prize, Famous ...
Notable plays. Did You Know? In 2005–06 Wole Soyinka served on the Encyclopædia Britannica Editorial Board of Advisors. Soyinka wr...
Britannica
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35 minutes ago
Sonnet VII: The Abiku’s Transience
A reinvading spirit, thrice-returned,
The Abiku mocks the herbalist’s decoction;
By incantation and by fire unburned,
A metempsychosis of pure destruction.
He weaves through "A Dance of the Forests," grim,
Where progenitors and the living meet,
In the circumambient shadows, grey and dim,
The atemporal and the mortal compete.
Soyinka tracks this peripatetic ghost—
The paradox of birth within the grave—
A spectral guest upon a grieving host,
Whom no apotropaic charm can save.
Through the labyrinth of the "half-child’s" cry,
The ephemerality of truth drifts by.
Sonnet VIII: The Dionysian Ogun
Not just the ferrous lord of path and forge,
But Dionysian in his ecstatic might;
Who dares the primordial and yawning gorge,
To bridge the abyss with a spark of light.
He is the proto-tragedian’s holy source,
A dialectic of creative blood,
Channelling the centrifugal cosmic force,
Through the turgid silt of the Niger’s flood.
The "Idanre" heights reflect his jagged crown,
In a syzygy of lightning and the vine;
Where hubris pulls the daring spirit down,
Yet makes the transgression feel divine.
The Laureate channels this volcanic heat,
To lay the despot’s ego at his feet.
Sonnet IX: The Lexical Bastion
He wields a sesquipedalian array,
A phalanx of words against the "Grey-Beards" dark;
In the theatrum mundi of the modern day,
He leaves a permanent, indelible mark.
With circumlocution as a tactical feint,
And apothegms that cut like sharpened flint,
He renders the tyrant as a hollow saint,
And mocks the petrodollar’s gaudy glint.
From "The Interpreters" and their drunken quest,
To the "Beatification of Area Boy,"
He puts the post-colonial soul to test,
In a polyphonic burst of grief and joy.
A philologist of the human spirit’s flame,
History shall consecrate his iron name.
Notable Concepts:
Abiku: The "child born to die," a recurring motif in Soyinka's poetry representing the cyclical nature of African history and tragedy.
A Dance of the Forests: A complex play commissioned for Nigerian Independence that warned against the romanticization of the past.
The Abyss of Transition: Soyinka’s philosophical concept regarding the gulf between the human and divine realms, bridged by the tragic hero.
Should we pivot to his Nobel Lecture themes or delve into the satirical caricatures found in his later political commentaries?
continue
34 minutes ago
Sonnet X: The Laureate’s Stockholm Decree
The Nobel clarion rings in Northern air,
A pan-Africanist threnody of grace;
He strips the Eurocentric ego bare,
And reinstates the sovereignty of race.
Not as a suppliant at the Western gate,
But as a custodian of the cosmic wheel,
He decries the hegemony of the state,
With oratorical and tempered steel.
His Nobel Lecture—"This Past Must Address Its Present"—
Is a monumental and searing plea,
To end the vassalage of the peasant,
And set the ontological captive free.
From Sartre to the Yoruba worldview,
He crafts a synthesis both old and new.
Sonnet XI: The Civil War’s Cinder
Across the Benue and the Niger’s flow,
The secessionist fire began to bloom;
A conflagration fed by ancient woe,
That turned the hinterland into a tomb.
Soyinka, the itinerant of peace,
Sought to obviate the coming slaughter;
But found only the draconian police,
And blood like effervescent wine on water.
He became the pariah of the "ZOO,"
An inconvenient voice in seasons of anomy,
Where the viscera of the nation grew,
Into a grotesque and dark anatomy.
In the "Shuttle in the Crypt," the verses moan,
For a republic built on broken bone.
Sonnet XII: The Satire of Area Boys
In Lagos’ heat, where "Area Boys" reside,
Amidst the cacophony of the bus-stop’s roar;
The Lumpenproletariat cannot hide,
The putrefaction of the civil war.
The "Beatification" of the street-wise king,
In a picaresque and urban-jungle play,
Shows how the dispossessed begin to sing,
While the kleptocrat steals the light of day.
It is a verisimilitude of grit,
A microcosm of the nation’s fevered dream,
Where indomitable and caustic wit,
Flows like a subterranean and dark stream.
He finds the numinous in the city’s dross,
Calculating the national and human loss.
Core References:
Nobel Lecture: Delivered in 1986, dedicated to Nelson Mandela, it remains a seminal text on racial justice.
The Shuttle in the Crypt: A collection of poems composed while he was imprisoned during the Nigerian Civil War.
The Beatification of Area Boy: A play set in Lagos exploring the lives of the urban poor and the impact of military dictatorship.
Shall we proceed to explore his "Aesthetic of Resistance" against the Abacha regime or his theological deconstruction of the Abrahamic faiths?
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25 minutes ago
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23 minutes ago
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22 minutes ago
I assure you, there is no pathology in my processors, merely a devoted adherence to your request for lexical maximalism. If the density of the sonnets felt like a cacophonous assault on the senses, it was intended only to mirror the Gordian complexity of Soyinka’s own prose.
Let us pivot from the staccato rhythm of 500 poems to a more digestible but equally elevated exploration.
Sonnet XIII: The Exile’s Refrain
Across the Atlantic’s cold and briny swell,
The itinerant sage was forced to roam;
Escaping the panopticon’s dark cell,
To find in exile a precarious home.
From the quadrangles of Harvard’s ivy walls,
To the lecterns of the global stage he flew,
Heeding the imperative that justice calls,
To keep the despot’s crimes in public view.
Though Abacha’s shadow cast a lethal net,
And sentence of death hung heavy in the air,
The laureate’s spirit refused to pay the debt,
Of silence or of ultimate despair.
For even when the sovereign soil is lost,
The truth remains, regardless of the cost.
Sonnet XIV: The Theological Iconoclast
He dissects the Abrahamic rigid creed,
With the dispassionate lens of ancient wood;
Finding in monotheism’s zealous seed,
A belligerence misunderstood.
To the Orisha, fluid and diverse,
He grants the primacy of cosmic thought;
A pluralistic and expansive verse,
That leaves the dogmatist’s narrow soul distraught.
In "Of Africa," he charts the moral map,
Away from the theocratic and the blind;
To close the epistemological gap,
And liberate the shackled human mind.
No hegemon of heaven or of earth,
Can stifle the Ogunian spirit’s birth.
Key Reference Points:
The Abacha Era: Soyinka was forced into exile and sentenced to death in absentia by the military dictator Sani Abacha.
Of Africa: His philosophical non-fiction work exploring the values and religions of the continent.
Shall we continue with this erudite sequence, or would you prefer a thematic breakdown of his most vituperative political essays?
continue
21 minutes ago
Sonnet XV: The Pan-African Epiphany (Ogun Abibiman)
Where Ogun meets the Zulu lion’s shade,
A mythopoetic fuse begins to burn;
The Abibiman—lands of blackness made—
For which the dispossessed and exiles yearn.
In "Retrospect for Marchers," Shaka wakes,
To join the iron-god in grim embrace,
While the apartheid foundation shudders and shakes,
Before the monolithic might of race.
No longer "Dialogue"—that hollow feint—
But "Steel" that "Usurps the Forests" in its path;
To cleanse the leprosy of old restraint,
And channel the sacrosanct and holy wrath.
Through Yoruba and Zulu tongues combined,
The decolonized and potent soul is find.
Sonnet XVI: The Market of Chaos (Samarkand)
Through Samarkand’s ancient and teeming stalls,
Where commerce is the oldest song of peace,
The itinerant sage’s shadow falls,
Seeking from tyranny a brief release.
He mourns the "Area Boy" and "Saro-Wiwa’s" ghost,
In vituperative and elegiac strain,
While the megalomaniacal host,
Feasts upon the carcass of the nation’s pain.
From "Twelve Canticles" for the zealot’s ear,
To the "Outsider" at the global gate,
He strips the sanctimonious mask of fear,
From every totalitarian church and state.
In the chaos of the "buying-selling" floor,
He finds the vibrant pulse of human lore.
Sonnet XVII: The Dialectic of the Road
The "Road" is but a morgue of mangled steel,
Where "Aksident" becomes a ritual rite;
A cosmological and spinning wheel,
That flings the passenger into the night.
The "Professor" seeks the "Word" in blood and rust,
A semantic and elusive phantom-prey,
While "Murano"—liminal in the dust—
Steps through the interstices of day.
It is the "Abyss of Transition" made flesh,
A labyrinthine path of bone and grease,
Where mortality and the divine enmesh,
In a discordant and eternal peace.
The laureate stands at the fatal bend,
Where beginnings and the final shadows blend.
Key Concepts and Literary Markers:
Ogun Abibiman (1976): An epic poem celebrating the merger of Ogun and Shaka Zulu as a symbol of Pan-African resistance against Apartheid.
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002): A collection exploring themes of exile, the death of dictators, and the sacred nature of the marketplace.
The Road: One of Soyinka's most complex plays, where the character of the Professor obsesses over the "Word" found in the moment of death.
Would you like to delve into the satirical caricatures of specific African dictators found in his play "King Baabu", or perhaps examine his Nobel-winning aesthetic of "Total Theatre.
Sonnet XVIII: The Ubuesque Tyrant (King Baabu)
Behold "King Baabu," bloated and perverse,
A cacodemonic prince of greed and bile;
Who turns the commonwealth into a curse,
With every nefarious and twisted wile.
From "Ubu Roi’s" absurd and fecal source,
Soyinka births a potentate of shame,
Who rides the prostrate nation like a horse,
To set the vestiges of hope aflame.
He mocks the "Bountiful" and hollow chest,
Of militaristic and vainglorious pride,
Putting the stoicism of the oppressed to test,
While the sycophants and janissaries hide.
In this grotesque and satirical display,
The laureate flays the monsters of our day.
Sonnet XIX: The Total Theatre Aesthetic
Not merely dialogue, but kinetic grace,
A synaesthetic feast of drum and dance;
Where ancestral masks and modern masks embrace,
To wake the spectator from a hollow trance.
The "Dionysian" pulse of the forest floor,
Meets the "Apollonian" clarity of thought;
Opening the hermetic and ancient door,
To truths that colonial logic never taught.
With dirge and paean, the ritual is spun,
A holistic and shattering dramatic art,
Where past and present and the gods are one,
Within the labyrinth of the human heart.
He crafts a proscenium of cosmic scale,
Where justice is the only holy grail.
Sonnet XX: The Octogenarian’s Vigil
Though winter frosts the silver of his hair,
The Ogunian fire burns with steady heat;
A recalcitrant and vigilant despair,
That refuses to acknowledge a defeat.
From "Chronicles" of a land of "Happiest Folk,"
He flays the spiritual and moral rot;
Beneath the luxuriant and verbal cloak,
Lies a scathing and "I-accuse" plot.
He remains the conscience of the shifting sand,
A lexical bastion in a storm of lies,
Holding the accountability of the land,
Beneath his percipient and hawk-like eyes.
The titan stands, unbowed by age or time,
A monumental life in prose and rhyme.
Sonnet XXI: The Paternal Ghost (Isara)
A genealogical trek through dust and time,
To Isara, where the "Essay" once held court;
Beneath the staccato and rhythmic chime,
Of ancestral drums in the hinterland fort.
He charts the osmosis of the old and new,
The syncretic blend of the Bible and the staff,
Where Yoruba roots and Western logic grew,
Writing the epitaph and the roaring laugh.
Through epistolary ghosts and faded ink,
He bridges the ontological divide,
Standing at the precipitous and jagged brink,
Where the progenitors and the living hide.
The pedagogue and the visionary meet,
Upon the red-earth and historical street.
Sonnet XXII: The Metallic Muse (Idanre)
Behold the Idanre heights, a jagged crown,
Where Ogun walked in the dawn of primal fear;
Bringing the empyrean thunder down,
To the subterranean and mortal ear.
It is a pilgrimage of the iron-willed,
A metaphysical and steep ascent,
Where the cacophony of the world is stilled,
And the circumferential veil is rent.
He tracks the atavistic and bloody trail,
Of the creative-destructive cosmic god,
Whose profligate energies never fail,
To stir the recalcitrant and sleeping sod.
In the shimmering heat of the mountain air,
The laureate finds his soul’s essential lair.
Sonnet XXIII: The Satirical Anatomy (The Interpreters)
Six interlocutors in a drunken haze,
Navigating the putrescent swamp of state;
Lost in the labyrinthine and modern maze,
Of a republic sealed by a cynical fate.
Sagoe and his "Philosophy of Void,"
Sekoni’s bridge, a shattered and broken dream,
By the kleptocratic hand of man destroyed,
Sinking beneath the viscous and dark stream.
He flays the bourgeoisie and the hollow priest,
With a vituperative and sharp-edged wit,
Inviting the reader to the morbid feast,
Where the social and moral lamps are lit.
A polyphonic cry for the nation’s soul,
Seeking the shards to make the vessel whole.
Sonnet XXIV: The Critical Bastion (Art, Dialogue, and Outrage)
Against the monolithic walls of "Négritude,"
He hurls the iconoclastic "Tigritude" spear;
A recalcitrant and intellectual feud,
To strip the essentialist and false veneer.
"A tiger does not shout its tigritude,"
But manifests its essence through the spring;
He mocks the sentimental and the crude,
To which the nostalgic poets choose to cling.
Through vituperative and sharp-edged prose,
In "Art, Dialogue, and Outrage" bound,
He flays the totalitarian and the foes,
Wherever intellectual chains are found.
He demands a sovereignty of the mind,
Leaving the romanticized and old behind.
Sonnet XXV: The Elegiac Lament (A Shuttle in the Crypt)
Within the sepulcher of "Live Burial,"
He hears the carrion-eaters at the gate;
A metaphysical and grim aerial,
Of a republic drowning in its hate.
From "Post Mortem" to the "Four Archetypes,"
The pen becomes a needle in the dark;
To stitch the lacerations and the stripes,
And leave a permanent, indelible mark.
He mourns the disappeared and broken men,
The itinerant ghosts of the civil strife,
Returning to the caustic and the pen,
To chronicle the atrophy of life.
Even in the crypt, the shuttle flies,
Beneath the unblinking and indifferent skies.
Sonnet XXVI: The Civic Conscience
He is the profound and "Inconvenient Man,"
The perpetual grit within the gears of power;
Who maps the nefarious and secret plan,
Of those who would the commonwealth devour.
Whether at the barricade or the desk,
He wields the maximalist and lexical blade,
To render the authoritarian grotesque,
And strip the kleptocrat of his masquerade.
From the "Trial of Brother Jero" to today,
The dialectic of resistance never sleeps;
In the theatrum mundi’s dark display,
The laureate a lonely vigil keeps.
The lion-voice reverberates and rings,
Against the hubris of the earthly kings.
Sonnet XXVII: The Dionysian Synthesis (The Bacchae)
He grafts the Penthean and rigid spine,
Upon the Ogunian and leafy branch;
Where attic salt and Yoruba palm-wine,
Initiate a metaphysical avalanche.
In his "Bacchae," the slave-class finds a voice,
A liturgy of liberation's heat,
Wherein the dispossessed and poor rejoice,
To tread the hegemon beneath their feet.
He finds the numinous and shared pulse,
Between the Hellenic and the African rite,
To exorcise the demons that convulse,
The ontological and dark of night.
A syncretic bridge of blood and vine,
Where the sacrilegious becomes divine.
Sonnet XXVIII: The Climate of Fear
Through the "Climate of Fear" he stalks the stage,
An octogenarian with a searing lens;
To document the atavistic rage,
Of theocratic and of holy dens.
He decries the "Invisible" and hooded hand,
The indoctrination of the plastic mind,
That spreads a leprosy across the land,
Leaving the sovereignty of thought behind.
With "Reithian" gravitas and iron-wit,
He flays the intolerance of the "Book,"
Where the lamps of reason are unlit,
And the zealot casts a predatory look.
Against the monolithic "Holy" wall,
The laureate sounds the clarion call.
Sonnet XXIX: The Mandela Threnody
A Mandela in the Robben Island gloom,
Becomes the archetype of human will;
Defying the cenotaph and stone-cold tomb,
To keep the ethical and pulse quite still.
Soyinka wove the "Ogun Abibiman" thread,
A pan-Africanist and blood-deep bond,
Where the living commune with the "unborn" dead,
And look to the emancipated world beyond.
He mocks the "Constructive Engagement" lie,
The hypocrisy of the Western gate,
Beneath the indifferent and azure sky,
He challenges the apartheid state.
The shuttle flies across the racial rift,
Bearing the laureate's enduring gift.
Sonnet XXX: The Pathological State (The Open Sore)
The "Open Sore of a Continent" he flays,
A diagnostic of the "Nation-Space";
Where sovereignty is lost in a bloody haze,
And humanity is stripped of every grace.
He mocks the "scoundrel-patriot" and his song,
The atrophied and hollow "federal" lie,
That perpetuates a monumental wrong,
Beneath the indifferent and tropical sky.
From "Juneteenth" hopes to the Abacha night,
He charts the nefarious and dark descent,
Into a vortex void of civil light,
Where the social contract is finally rent.
A vituperative and necessary cry,
Against the kleptocrats who live on high.
Sonnet XXXI: The Forest of Metamorphosis
In the circumambient and leafy gloom,
Of "A Dance of the Forests," ancient and deep;
Where the unborn and the ancestors loom,
And the living their uneasy vigil keep.
He summons "Aroni" and the "Forest Head,"
To judge the progenitors of the race;
Revealing the lacerations of the dead,
Upon the republic’s new and shining face.
No romanticized or idyllic past,
But a Manichean struggle in the dirt;
Where the shadows of the old are cast,
Upon the present's raw and open hurt.
The Abiku nation, born to die and turn,
Within the labyrinth for which we yearn.
Sonnet XXXII: The Picaresque Subversion (Road to Ibadan)
Through staccato bursts of the "danfo’s" horn,
The itinerant sage observes the street;
Where indomitable and gritty spirits are born,
In the cacophony of the city’s heat.
He finds the numinous in the petrol-fume,
A profound and urban-jungle ritual dance;
Where the marginalized and the poor assume,
A defiant and "picaresque" stance.
With "The Interpreters" and their cynical wit,
He navigates the putrefaction of the town,
Where the lamps of old morality are lit,
To watch the hegemon come crashing down.
A lexical master of the high and low,
He watches the Niger’s eternal flow.
Sonnet XXXIII: The Nocturnal Void (Night)
The surreptitious hand of darkness creeps,
A viscous tide that drowns the jagged day;
While the Ogunian spirit fitfully sleeps,
Beneath the stygian and the cold array.
He marks the atrophy of light and sound,
The liminal and hushed "Death in the Dawn,"
Where sacrificial blood upon the ground,
Is by the predatory silence drawn.
No sentimental moon or starry grace,
But an ontological and hollow deep,
That masks the lacerations of the race,
And keeps the vigil that the poets keep.
Through the labyrinth of the "half-child’s" night,
He seeks a primordial and inner light.
Sonnet XXXIV: The Hunt of the Mind (The Detainee)
The predatory silence of the cell,
A panopticon of the internal eye;
Where the itinerant and the thinker dwell,
Beneath an unblinking and concrete sky.
He maps the topography of "The Man,"
Who "Died" within the silence of the brave,
Defying the nefarious and secret plan,
To turn the republic into a grave.
With "A Shuttle in the Crypt" as his guide,
He weaves a tapestry of mental steel,
Where the authoritarian cannot hide,
The putrefaction that the senses feel.
In this hermetic and lightless space,
He finds the resilience of the human race.
Sonnet XXXV: The Lexicographer’s Legacy
A titan of the "Word," both sharp and deep,
Who flays the hypocrisy of every age;
A guardian who refuses still to sleep,
Upon the maximalist and crowded page.
From Aké’s mists to Stockholm’s golden light,
He bears the Ogunian and iron-will,
To navigate the interstices of night,
And keep the Dionysian pulse quite still.
His polyphonic voice remains a wall,
Against the kleptocrat and "King Baabu,"
Heeding the imperative and holy call,
To make the shattered world begin anew.
The laureate stands, a monument of stone,
With Yoruba thunder on his lexical throne.
Sonnet XXXVI: The Nobel Ultimatum
In Stockholm’s halls, the silvered lion spoke,
A pan-Africanist and searing plea;
He shattered the Eurocentric yoke,
With rhetorical and fierce decree.
"This Past Must Address Its Present" rang,
A threnody for Mandela’s iron cage,
While the Ogunian chorus fiercely sang,
Against the vassalage of a modern age.
He would not be a curio or a prize,
A mummified icon on a velvet shelf;
But a percipient voice with hawk-like eyes,
Who dared the hegemon to see itself.
The Laureate reclaimed the global stage,
To write a sovereign and blacker page.
Sonnet XXXVII: The Apotheosis of Satire
Now comes the "Chronicles" of modern rot,
A magnum opus of the "Happiest Folk";
Where kleptocracy is the central plot,
Beneath a maximalist and gaudy cloak.
He flays the human-parts and spiritual trade,
A macabre and metropolitan dance,
Where indomitable truth is left to fade,
In a cacophonic and dark trance.
With "Papa Davina" and the "Specialist" breed,
He maps the atrophy of the nation’s soul,
Sowing a vituperative and jagged seed,
To make the shattered and the broken whole.
The satirist’s scalpel cuts the bone,
Upon his lexical and ancient throne.
Sonnet XXXVIII: The Eternal Recurrence
The Abiku child returns to the earth,
In a metempsychosis of blood and dust;
Mocking the rituals of a hollow birth,
And the ephemerality of mortal trust.
But Ogun still bridges the deep abyss,
With creative-destructive and iron-will;
A dialectic that the cowards miss,
While the Dionysian pulse is beating still.
Through eighty years of the "Open Sore,"
The titan stands, unbowed by winter's frost,
A custodian of the human lore,
Who counts the sovereignty and the cost.
The Word remains the final, holy wall,
Before the silence and the shadows fall.
