Sixteen paces
By twenty-three. They hold
Siege against humanity
And Truth
Employing time to drill through to his sanity
Schismatic
Lover of Antigone !
You will? You will unearth
Corpses of yester-
Year? Expose manure of present birth?
Seal him live
In that same necropolis.
May his ghost mistress
Point the classic
Route to Outsiders’ Stygian Mysteries.
Bulletin:
He sleeps well, eats
Well. His doctors note
No damage
Our plastic surgeons tend his public image.
Confession
Fiction ? Is truth not essence
Of Art, and fiction Art?
Lest it rust
We kindly borrowed his poetic licence.
Galileo
We hoped he’d prove – age
Or genius may recant – our butchers
Tired of waiting
Ordered; take the scapegoat, drop the sage.
Guara’l The lizard:
Every minute scrapes
A concrete mixer throat.
The cola slime
Flies to blotch the walls in patterned grime
The ghoul:
Flushed from hanging, sniffles
Snuff, to clear his head of
Sins — the law
Declared — that morning’s gallows load were dead of.
The voyeur:
Times his sly patrol
For the hour upon the throne
I think he thrills
To hear the Muse’s constipated groan
Wole Soyinka
