Lost Poems, Wole Soyinka

Ah Wole Soyinka, I discovered his writings in my last semester of high school. I remember my English teacher clearly asking me if I didn't prefer another author for the focus of my senior project, but I think I was mostly awed by Soyinka's focus and creativity to convey a message. So here is one of his poems that I came to really appreciate:

“Lost Poems”

By Wole Soyinka

I think sometimes of poems I have lost –

Maybe their loss it was that saved the world – still

They do get lost, and I recall them only

When a fragment levitates behind

Discarded invoices, the black-rimmed notice

Of a last goodbye, a birth, a wedding invitation

And other milestones of a lesser kind.

The moment torments – why? Beyond

An instant’s passion, dubious flash –

Satori in a bar, taxi or restaurant, an airport

Waiting lounge – that births the scribble

On a stained napkin, what cast of the ephemeral

Once resonates, then spurns the mind

The morning after? All that survives

Mimics a wrinkled petal pressed

Between pages of long-discarded books.

A falling leaf trapped briefly by the passing sun

It flashes, a mere shard of memory

But filled with wistful accusations

Of abandonment. Too late,

 

No life to it. The book is closed

The moment’s exultation or despair

Drowned in wine rivers, shriveled

In suns of greater wars. I turn

These scrapbooks of a moment’s truth

To cinders, their curlings curse in smoke –

Once more fugitive beyond recall

Of usurper’s summons by

The morning after.

I think of voices I have lost, and touches.

The fleeting brush of eyes that burrows

Deep within the heart of need, the pledge

Unspoken, the more than acts of faith

That forge an instant world in silent pact

With strangers – deeper, deeper bonds

Than the dearest love’s embrace.