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.
