Wole Soyinka
Civilian and Soldier
My apparition rose from the fall of lead, Declared, ‘I am a civilian.’ It only served To aggravate your fright. For how could I Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
IN THE SMALL HOURS
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes, Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins Of marooned mariners, captives Of
Dedication
for Moremi, 1963 Earth will not share the rafter’s envy; dung floors Break, not the gecko’s slight skin, but its fall Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life As this