Poems

Civilian and Soldier

My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.

You stood still
For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson
Of your traing sessions, cautioning -
Scorch earth behind you, do not leave
A dubious neutral to the rear. Reiteration
Of my civilian quandary, burrowing earth
From the lead festival of your more eager friends
Worked the worse on your confusion, and when
You brought the gun to bear on me, and death
Twitched me gently in the eye, your plight
And all of you came clear to me.

I hope some day
Intent upon my trade of living, to be checked
In stride by your apparition in a trench,
Signalling, I am a soldier. No hesitation then
But I shall shoot you clean and fair
With meat and bread, a gourd of wine
A bunch of breasts from either arm, and that
Lone question - do you friend, even now, know
What it is all about?

My Analysis:

The poem takes a snapshot of a civilian facing death by a soldier's fire but the civilian is trying to educate the soldier as to what exactly he is trying to accomplish, and if in fact he himself understands the big picture of those who have set him off to kill their own innocent ones.

Hamlet

He stilled his doubts, they rose to halt and lame
A resolution on the rack. Passion's flame
Was doused in fear of error; his mind's unease
Bred indulgence to the state's disease

Ghosts embowelled his earth; he clung to rails
In a gallery of abstractions, dissecting tales
As 'told by an idiot'. Passionless he set a stage
Of passion for the guilt he would engage.

Justice despaired. The turn and turn abouts
Of reason danced default to duty's counterpoint
Till treachery scratched the slate of primal clay
Then Metaphysics waived a thought's delay--
It took the salt in the wound, the 'point
Envenom'd too' to steel the prince of doubts.

My Analysis:

"Hamlet," shows the poet's empathy with Shakespeare's most famous character. "Hamlet" contains many references to the play itself, yet many of the images and lines could be applied to Soyinka's own life in prison. The poem is written in sonnet form, with a tight rhyme scheme, which focuses the reader's attention on the emphasis which Soyinka places on the link between himself and the Dane.

Hamlet reflects Nigeria's sickness and its infection, which permeates through to Soyinka himself. The confusion and horrors of Denmark have their modern-day counterpart in Nigeria, and, more specifically, in the literal and mental imprisonment of Soyinka.

'Post Mortem'

there are more functions to a freezing plant
than stocking bee; cold biers of mortuaries
submit their dues, harnessed—glory be!-
in the cold hand of death…
his mouth was cotton filled, his man-pike
shrunk to a subsoil grub
his head was hallowed and his brain
on scales—was this a trick to prove
fore-knowledge after death?
his flesh confesses what has stilled
his tongue; masked fingers think from him
to learn, how not to die.
let us love all things of grey; grey slabs
grey scalpel, one grey sleep and form,
grey images.

My Analysis

Soyinka is trying to show death and the usual human behaviors in a very humorous way, by pretending to accept death himself as part of the passage of life and its inescapable reality.

I think it rains

I saw it raise
The sudden cloud, from ashes. Settling
They joined in a ring of grey; within,
The circling spirit

Oh it must rain
These closures on the mind, binding us
In strange despairs, teaching
Purity of sadness

And how it beats
Skeined transparencies on wings
Of out desires, searing dark longings
In cruel baptisms

Rain-reeds, practised in
The grace of yielding, yet unbending
From afar, this your conjugation with my earth
Bares crouching rocks.

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SEASONS

Rust is ripeness, rust.

And the wilted corn-plume;

Pollen is mating-time when swallows

Weave a dance.

Of feathered arrows

Thread corn-stalks in winged

Streaks of light. And we loved to hear

Spliced phrases of the wind, to hear

Rasps in the field, where corn-leaves

Pierce like bamboo slivers.

Now, garnerers we,

Awaiting rust on tassels, draw

Long shadows from the dusk, wreathe

Dry thatch in woodsmoke. Laden stalks

Ride the germ’s decay - we await

The promise of the rust.

Landscaped

we're swallowed, when a wave has such force;
over the lights other lights are a swollen electric talk;
leaving emits beginning, like a newer tear; &
even then ants eat time;

serious bizness is left inside the music;
ordinance unexploded scattered on saturated ground;
you might realize, when my reflection explodes;
in the half-light the city becomes dried out,
nailed against a scrawled note;
kennels are a good place to keep silver.
At each quiet moment laughter walks

Dedication

for Moremi, 1963

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe
That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels.

Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's
Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over.
Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night.

Peppers green and red-child-your tongue arch
To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats
Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips.

Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held
Cuspids in thorn nesting, insealed as the heart of kernel-
A woman's flesh is oil-child, palm oil on your tongue

Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd
From self-same timeless run of runnels as refill
Your podlings, child, weaned from yours we embrace

Earth's honeyed milk, wine of the only rib.
Now roll your tongue in honey till your cheeks are
Swarming honeycombs-your world needs sweetening, child.

Camwood round the heart, chalk for flight
Of blemish-see? it dawns!-antimony beneath
Armpits like a goddess, and leave this taste

Long on your lips, of salt, that you may seek
None from tears. This, rain-water, is the gift
Of gods-drink of its purity, bear fruits in season.