Wole Soyinka
Sixteen paces
By twenty-three (dimension of Soyinka’s prison).[YB2] They hold
Siege (Barrier) against
humanity
And Truth
[YB3] Employing time to drill through to his sanity [YB4]
Schismatic (Controversial)
Lover of
Antigone (Greek mythology) !
[YB5] You will? You will unearth
Corpses of yester-
Year? Expose manure (dung) of
present birth?
Seal him live
In that same necropolis (cemetery).
May his ghost mistress
Point the classic
Route to
Outsiders' Stygian [YB6] (gloomy and dark) Mysteries.
Bulletin[YB7] : (statements or news from the prison)
He sleeps
well, eats
Well. His doctors note
No damage[YB8]
Our
plastic (fake) surgeons tend his public image[YB9] .
Confession[YB10]
Fiction ? Is truth not essence
Of Art, and fiction Art? (Fiction is art – truth is part of
art – fiction is truth)
Lest (in
case) it rust (decay)
We kindly
borrowed his poetic licence.[YB11]
Galileo[YB12]
We hoped he'd prove - age
Or genius may recant (reject/renounce/abandon) - our butchers (killers of these
genius people)
Tired of waiting
Ordered (without proving anything with facts); take the scapegoat (innocents), drop the sage (learned).
Guara'l The lizard:
Every minute scrapes (fixes)
A concrete mixer throat (tobacco).[YB13]
The cola slime (spit)
Flies to blotch (stain) the
walls in patterned grime (dirt)
The ghoul: (eats dead body/ghost)
Flushed (red-faced) from hanging, sniffles[YB14]
Snuff (consumes drug), to clear his head of
Sins -- the law
Declared -- that morning's gallows load (the man who was hanging) were dead
of.
The voyeur: (Sadist)
Times his sly patrol (to take a round)
For the hour upon the throne (toilet seat[YB15] )
I think he thrills
To hear the Muse's[YB16]
(Greek mythology)
constipated groan
[YB1]Suggests
the torture he gone through the imprisonment of two years – the military government
in Nigeria tried to impose on the mind of poet
[YB2]Description
of the prison – only 16 paces to live for 23 months.
[YB3]The
walls are referring here the barrier to the freedom of poet – it was a kind of
barrier towards humanity and truth
[YB4]These
months were difficult for him to pass – it was enough for him to harm his
sanity
[YB5]Antigone
performed her brother’s funeral – her uncle was resisting this because of her
duty – Christianity cannot allow the burial of the one who commits suicide –
Poet connects himself with Antigone
[YB6]Stygian
is again a Greek mythology’s reference – the river is for deal – it is an
underworld for the dead – isolates dead souls from living
[YB7]News
or statement given by the officials of prison
[YB8]Officials
were giving statements that the prisoner – poet is having a good life in prison
– even medical check-ups also says the same thing
[YB9]The
word ‘plastic’ here refers to lie – surgeons were spreading untruthful
conditions of prisoners – guard used to beat the poet but just to maintain the
image they were not revealing the truth
[YB10]Confession
word refers to the real reason of the imprisonment of the poet – supplying arms
to one side – but officials created a story that the poet was supporting the
rebel in the war
[YB11]Satire
on officials/police/guards – he imagines them saying these lines – they have
taken the right of Soyinka to write poetry
[YB12]He
refers to Galileo and says that his genius has got rejected by the authorities –
they killed the people who were telling the truth by making them scapegoats
[YB13]Description
of a first guard – he eats tobacco and spits on the wall – that makes the wall dirty –
the condition in which the poet is living
[YB14]The second guard who was on duty for the hanging/morning gallows – the government killed
the man who was hanging – this was inhuman and the guard was aware with this –
to get rid out of the thoughts of committing the sins he used to consume
drugs/snuff
[YB15]The
third guard is having a sadist mentality – when poet sits on toilet seat which
he refers to ‘throne’ here – he comes at the same time –and poet observes that
he feels thrill (which makes him sadist) when he watches poet like this
[YB16]Daughters
of Zeus (group of nine daughter) – goddesses on poetry inspiration – here Muse
refers to poet himself
No comments:
Post a Comment