Sunday 28 June 2015

Conversation at Night with a Cockroach by Wole Shoyinka

I murmured to their riven hearts:
Yet blood must flow, a living flood
Bravely guarded, boldly split
.
Half-way up your grove of union
We watched you stumble-mere men
Lose footing on the peaks of deities.
.
A round table, board
Of the new abiding-man, ghoul, Cockroach,
Jackal and broods of vile crossbreedings
Broke bread to a loud veneration
Of awe-filled creatures of the wild.
Sat to a feast of love-our pulsing hearts!
.
No air, no earth, no loves or death
Only the brittle sky in harmattan
And in due season, rain to waken the shurb
A hailstone herald to the rouse
Of hills, echoes in canyons, pastures
In the palm of ranges, moss horizons
On distant ridges, anthill spires for milestones.
.
Spread its wings in a feeble sun
And rasped his saw-teeth. A song
Of triumph rose on the deadened air
A feeler probed the awful silence,
Withdrew in foreknowing contentment
All was well. All was even
As it was in the beginning
.
In that year's crucible we sought
To force impurities in nation weal
Belly-up, heat-drawn by fires
Of truth.
.
You lit the fires, you and saw
Your dawn of dawning yield
To our noon of darkness.

Wole Soyinka.

Wole Soyinka is one the most honoured African poets. He is a playwright, poet, lecturer and an activist. He was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature in 1986 being the African to be so honoured. Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July, 1934.

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