Soyinka Excerpts: ‘If That World Leaves Its Course . . . ‘

Here are selections from the works of Nigerian playwright, novelist and poet Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature. From the play “Death and the King’s Horseman”

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man; there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?

Now forget the dead. Forget even the living. Turn your mind only to the unborn.

You have betrayed us. We fed your sweetness such as we hoped awaited you on the other side. But you said no, I must eat the world’s left-overs. We said you were the hunter who brought the quarry down; to you belonged the vital portions of the game. No, you said, I am the hunter’s dog and I shall eat the entrails of the game and the feces of the hunter. We said you were the hunter returning home in triumph, a slain buffalo pressing down on his neck; you said wait, I first must turn up this cricket hole with my toes. From the play “A Dance of the Forests”

Before he made hard obeisance to his earth

My ax was executioner at Oro’s neck. Alone

Alone I cut the strands that mocked me, till head

And boastful slave lay side by side, and I

Demoke, sat on the shoulders of the tree

My spirit set free and singing, my hands

My father’s hands possessed by demons of blood

And I carved three days and nights til tools

Were blunted, and these hands, my father’s hands

Swelled big as tree-trunks. From the poem “A Shuttle in the Crypt”

Ever-ready bank accounts

Are never read where

Children slay the cockroach for a meal

Awaiting father-forager’s return.

The mind of the hungered innocence must turn

To strange cuisine--kebab of butterflies.