Twelve Canticles for the Zealot

Wole Soyinka

I

He wakes from a prolonged delirium, swears

He has seen the face of God.

God help all those whose fever never raged

Or has subsided.

II

Perched on church steeple, minaret, cupola

Smug as misericords, gleeful as gargoyles

On gables of piety, the vampire acolyte

Waits to leap from private hell

To all four compass points -- but will not voyage alone.

His variant on the doctored coin reads: Come with me or --

Go to -- hell!

III

He craves a parity

Beyond the contents of his skull.

A hundred thousand

Vacuities of mind are soon

Cowed beneath the grace and power

Of one gossamer quill -- yet

Beware the mute! Beware the furtive power

Of the mutant's blade.

IV

The trade of healing takes strange turns.

Doctor and reservist, seeks the lethal path

To hearts of devotees in East Jerusalem,

Makes cadavers of believers turned

Eastwards in devotion -- then turns the barrel Inwards -- still in hot pursuit?

For there are no post-mortems in the after-life

Though rigor mortis settles on the breath

Of peace.

V

They would be killers anyway, and anywhere.

Their world's a hiatus. Jerked to life,

They suck the teats of piety, briefly shed

A long cocoon of death. Dead eyes,

A death humility, death wish, dead end,

A death asymmetry that befits

A death-bound unbeginning.

Their mentors live, and thrive, instruct.

Behold their vengeance for a living death --

Wielding infantile gums but --

Teethed at school.

VI

It was his own kind, nailed

Yitzak Rabin to crossroads of the

Orient Arms extended to the Heights

Of peace. Across the Suez, the ghost

Of his precursor on the viewing stand

Watched the grim replay of a familiar reel.

VII

Ogun came riding through the streets

Of Jerusalem. The Chosen barred his way.

His bright metallic lore was profanation,

Railed the wandering tribe, custodian now

Of streets and pathways, closed on hallowed days

To songs of iron and steel, even a child's meandering

Bicycle, or infant's crib.

Come war, will they deny

The aid of iron? Come death

Can they delay the caller's blade

By plea of Sacred Feast?

The zealots' hands

Are stretched to rock the erring vehicle,

But not as rock the cradle of an infant peace.

Claws of hate, and clasp of closure reach

From pole to pole, embracing Convertites of every faith. The maiming,

Killing act is all.

VIII

A god is nowhere born, yet everywhere.

But Rama's sect rejects that fine distinction --

The designated spot is sanctified, not for piety but --

For dissolution of yours from mine, politics of hate --

And forced exchange -- peace for a moment's ecstasy.

They turn a mosque to rubble, stone by stone,

Condemned usurper of Lord Rama's vanished spot

Of dreamt epiphany. Now a cairn of stones

Usurps a dream of peace -- can they dream peace

In iconoclast Uttar Pradesh?

IX

The meek shall inherit the earth ...

Blessed are the peacemakers ...

Shalom ... Shalom ... Shalom ...

Irosu wonrin, irosu wonrin.

Salaam ailekum, ailekum

Shanti ... shanti ... shanti ...

Oom ... oom ... oom ... ooom ...

Seek havens of peace on ocean floors,

Submarine depths, in lost worlds, black holes

Collapsed galaxies, in hermit caves In jungle fastnesses and arctic wastes

Thorns of crowns and hairy shirts, beds of nails,

The saintly cheek that turns the other side, but --

Not in texts, not by learned rote. It's there

The unmeek prove inheritors of the earth.

They are the scripture grooms, possessive

To the last submissive dot. Punctilious

Guards of annotations, they sleepwalk blind to all

But the fatal hiatus:

Boom for oom and -- sword for Word.

What is missing is -- fulfilled!

X

Ile gbogbo nle orisa ee,

ile gbogbo nle orisa Ile gbogbo nle orisa ee, ile gbogbo nle orisa

Enia lo m'orisa w'aiye oo

Ile gbogbo nle orisa ee

Invent your god and forge his will

The home of piety is the soul.

I come from Ogun's land where

Women plant and teach and cure

Mould and build and cultivate,

Bestride the earth on sturdy thighs

Wipe sweat off open faces.

I come from Ogun's land where

Women spurn the veil, and men

And earth rejoice!

XI

Cast the sanctimonious stone

And leave frail beauty shredded in the square

Of public shame. This murder

Is the rock of sin, the wayward veil

A mere pebble's glint.

XII

Orunmila! Eleri ipin

Ibikeji Olodumare

Ajeju oogun

Obiriti, Ap'ijo iku da ...

Some words are coarse, obscene, indecent.

They make a case for censorship, such words as

Pagan, heathen, infidel, unbeliever, kafiri, etc.

The cleric swears he'll sweep the streets clean

Of the unclean, armed with Book and Beard. Both

Turn kindling, but overturn the law of physics.

For the fire consumes all but the arsonist. He lives

To preach another day. The promised beast

Of the Apocalypse left me unbeliever

Till a rambling cleric apportioned death on CNN --

Surely that devil's instrument! -- on Taslim Nazreem.

She wrote of an equalising God, androgynous

Who deals, ambidextrous, with the Left and Right.

XIII

...and a thirteenth for the merely superstitious.

This thirteenth canticle for you, and let

Ill-luck infest your dreams awhile, stress your fears.

Not one but both -- Friday and thirteen

Joined to press the entry of my world

Onto your calendar. Would I could boast

A triple six, a Grand Slam by Satan's reckoning --

I would have long submerged the world

In cosmic laughter!