GOING POETIC... WOLE SOYINKA

Today being the 78 th birthday of our great Nobel Laureate Professor Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka. Lest we forget our own Kongi was the first African to win the Nobel Laureate in Literature.As we all know, he has written a lot of great works including popular plays like Lion and the Jewel,Kongi’s Harvest,Trials of Brother Jero to mention a few…I have also enjoyed one of his many other works like The Man Died: Prison Notes (1971) which is one of his Memoirs alongside also a vast range of works in Poetry.

On the occasion of his birthday today,I have decided to publish one of his Poems-Abiku-it is my favourite of his many poems.

ABIKU

Written by Wole Soyinka

Wanderer child. It is the same child who dies and returns again and again to plague the mother. -Yoruba belief

In vain your bangles cast

Charmed circles at my feet

I am Abiku, calling for the first

And repeated time.

Must I weep for goats and cowries

For palm oil and sprinkled ask?

Yams do not sprout amulets

To earth Abiku's limbs.

So when the snail is burnt in his shell,

Whet the heated fragment, brand me

Deeply on the breast - you must know him

When Abiku calls again.

I am the squirrel teeth, cracked

The riddle of the palm; remember

This, and dig me deeper still into

The god's swollen foot.

Once and the repeated time, ageless

Though I puke, and when you pour

Libations, each finger points me near

The way I came, where

The ground is wet with mourning

White dew suckles flesh-birds

Evening befriends the spider, trapping

Flies in wine-froth;

Night, and Abiku sucks the oil

From lamps. Mothers! I'll be the

Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep

Yours the killing cry.

The ripest fruit was saddest

Where I crept, the warmth was cloying.

In silence of webs, Abiku moans, shaping

Mounds from the yolk.

Written by Wole Soyinka

Keep achieving Greatness!

Emmanuel Ayeni

QUIZ!!!

WHAT IS THE LATEST PUBLISHED WORK BY THIS MAN?'

The first two correct answers attract a prize

Answers in comment section

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