Live Burial - Wole Soyinka - poem explanation

 

 

Live Burial[YB1] 

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

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 [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

The Piano and The Drums - Gabriel Okara - Explanation of poem

 

The Piano and The Drums[YB1] 

Gabriel Okara

When at break of day (sense of beginning) at a riverside (life)

I hear jungle drums telegraphing [YB2] (giving a message)

the mystic rhythm (Spiritual - supernatural), urgent, raw (fresh)

like bleeding flesh , speaking of

primal (primitive/original/early) youth and the beginning,

I see the panther ready to pounce,

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with spears poised.[YB3]  (African jungle – culture – as primitive)

 

And my blood ripples (blood flow), turns torrent (blood flows with rush),

Topples (falls into memories) the years and at once I’m 

in my mother’s laps a suckling (infant);

at once I’m walking simple

paths with no innovations

rugged (rough), fashioned with the naked

warmth (connection with nature and love for culture) of hurrying feet and groping hearts (hearts full of feelings)

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.[YB4] 

 

Then I hear a wailing (crying) piano

solo speaking of complex ways (Western culture)

in tear- furrowed concerto[YB5]  (seductive but multi-layerd);

of far away lands (Western land – difference between the culture)

and new horizons with

Coaxing (sweet-talking) diminuendo (a decrease in loudness in a piece of music), counterpoint (a melody in conjuction with another melody), 

Crescendo [YB6] (increasing and leading to the climax), but lost in the labyrinth of its complexities, it ends in the middle of a phrase at a dagger point

And I lost (because of the mixing) in the morning mist[YB7] 

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and concerto[YB8] .

 

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 [YB1] [YB1]Piano represents Western culture and Drums represents African culture

Expresses his feelings through music

 [YB2]The word is different than the other words – drums do not beat or create sounds but Okara says that they are giving a message to the nature and humankind

 [YB3]Effects of drum to the poet and other natural elements – he imagines and remembers – how this sound is effecting jungle residents.

 [YB4]In the core of African culture nature beats – there are heart beats of nature in Africa – description of African land

 [YB5]A concerto is a classical music composition that highlights a solo instrument against the background of a full orchestra. Bach is one composer known for writing concertos. In a concerto, a piano, violin, flute, or other instrument plays solo parts that are backed up or highlighted by an orchestra.

 [YB6]Words like Coaxing diminuendo – crescendo here represents the complexity of music (culture) and the difficulty they face to understand it.

 [YB7]When the sound of drum is mixed with piano – poet lost himself – which represents loss of identity – culture because of mixing it with the other

 [YB8]Poet warns those who choose white culture over their own culture and advises to choose and follow any one culture than taking both together and creating a kind of chaos.