‘Idanre’ for BBC 100
by Wole Soyinka
‘Idanre’ for BBC 100 - Wole Soyinka
‘Idanre’ for BBC 100
Night sets me free; I suffer skies to sprout
Ebb to full navel in progressive arcs, ocean
Of a million roe, highway of eyes and moth-wings.
Night sets me free, I ride on ovary silences
In the wake of ghosts
Ogun’s mantle brushed the leaves, the phase of night
Was mellow wine joined to a dirge
Of shadows, the air withdrew to scything motions
Of his dark-shod feet, seven-ply crossroads
Hands of camwood, breath of indigo
Night sets me free, soft sediments on skin
And sub-soil mind… Dawn came gradual, mists
Fell away from rock and honeycomb, Idanre woke
To braided vapours, a dance of seven veils
The septuple god was groom and king.
Mists fell to mote infinities from mountain face
Retrieved, were finely gathered to a sponge
Of froth murmurs in palm veins, he rinsed
The sunrise of his throat in agile wine; I took the sun
In his copper calabash
Dawn, He who had dire reaped
And in the wrong season, bade the forests swallow him
And left mankind to harvest. At pilgrim lodge
The wine-girl kept lone vigil, fused still
In her hour of charity
A dawn of bright processions, the sun peacocked
Loud, a new mint of coins. Ans those were all
The night hours, only the dissipated gourds,
Rain serried floor, fibre walls in parsimonious
Sifting of the sun, and she…
Light burnished to a copper earth, cornucopia
Fell in light cascades around her feet. Our paths
Grew solemn as her indrawn eye, bride of Night
Hoard of virgin dawns, expectant grew her distant gaze
And Harvest came, responsive
The first fruits rose from subterranean hoards
First in our vision, corn sheaves rose over hill
Long before the bearers, domes of eggs and flesh
Of palm fruit, red, oil black, froth flew in sun bubbles
Burst over throngs of golden gourds
And they moved towards resorption in His alloy essence
Primed to a fusion, primed to the sun’s dispersion
Containment and communion, seed-time and harvest, palm
And pylon, Ogun’s road a ‘Mobius’ orbit, kernel
And electrons, wine to alchemy.
Recording used by permission of the BBC - recorded by the author for a BBC radio broadcast on 22nd September, 1968 - from Idanre and Other Poems (Methuen & Co, 1967) used by permission of the author.