Ode laica per Chibok e Leah

Wole Soyinka

• Publisher: Jaca Book
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9788816801233
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Il male è sottoposto a un processo di incubazione infinito, che non conosce momenti di stanca. Una volta covato, rigurgita spore di orrore e odio in direzioni insospettate, con effetti disastrosi su chi ne rimane coinvolto, soffocando il bene sotto una coltre di sospetti. Oggi il destinatario può essere Christchurch, in Nuova Zelanda, domani, a un polo di distanza, un altro luogo irreprensibile, un oscuro villaggio nel nord-est della Nigeria che prende il nome di Dapchi. Le conseguenze sono identiche. Ci troviamo dunque davanti a un problema di vita o di morte che, con brutalità inusuale, si è ritorto contro un continente che non è estraneo al disprezzo, se non addirittura alla negazione, della natura umana. Non si tratta solo di una questione di sopravvivenza, bensì di esistenza – ma in che forma? La questione è particolarmente pertinente sul fronte africano perché il nostro è un continente le cui popolazioni hanno subito ondate di disumanizzazione nel corso dei secoli, operate a cuor leggero da forze esterne.

Parte terza

A HUMANIST ODE FOR CHIBOK, LEAH

I. Lessons Since Eternity

Did we not truly go to sleep? Take

Leave of absence from the world of rage?

Why then the lamentations? Chibok? Dapchi?

Neither was yesterday, nor yester year,

Nor decades, nor centuries suddenly absolved

Of guilt. A Forest called Sambisa spells

Millennial past and present open chutes

Dispensing lies. We shrink in fear, squeeze dry

The province of the mind. Each vacuum grants

Occupancy to the flatulence of deities.

Only the name of godhead differs, power

Is the name it veils, the sacramental end

Whose hallowed halter keeps humanity in check.

Clerics smirk at swelling herds of devotees

In rapt assemblage, ranked for fleecing.

Slaughter racks of centuries stand replaced

By mass disposal engines of modernity.

The hand that blesses also pulls the lever –

History mocks. History strikes again!

Our guilt is this – it lies, not in a spasm

Of neglect that gives sheep to wolves

For mating. The crime began aeons of time

Ago, distends into the unforeseeable.

It lies in this concurrent hour, a metronome

Ticking time away in antique mode.

Mesmeric, illusion reigns, and motion fakes

Progression. We sleep, we wake. Others did not.

The child in us dies in the child that died –

No one seems to mind. There are other children,

Captives to be bounced on trampolines

Of lies. One lie lies flattened, another

Rises in its place, sanctified, yet hawked –

In open stalls, writ: Revelation.

The lie resumes its march in lame pietisms

We gazed beyond the cancer, pricked the cyst.

Honour killings stay in vogue, child rape,

Draped in festive rites – uneven nuptials.

Serially. A child is soiled rags, manfully

Used, manfully discarded. Behold a nation’s

Cross-border paedophile earn a hero’s

Welcome in Abuja, crucible of laws

That claim to set the human sense of being

Apart from rutting beasts. Salute the martyred

Groom. Behold the wise, elected ones,

Bonded in lush renumerations, race

To enter laws that make woman of the child

Once the bans of marriage are pronounced!

The cleric’s unctuous voice ascends to bless

The impatient thrust of lust and – emulation!

Scripture-glib, pontificating groom,

Who seeks to drape the pervert streak in man

In gospel robes and texts inviolate. Is yours

A different faith from neighbouring Chad?

Are you informed? There, prison gates await

Your soul-mate, preening minister of state

Who thought to flout his nation’s sexual code

In deep hinterland, far from policing eyes!

Approach the Sufi seers of Senegal for verdict –

Those saints of self-denial and inner light.

Show me the creed that lowers motherhood

To eleven years, and I shall lead you

To that forest where Chibok bears,

At wedlock rape, stigmata of vaginal fistula.

Evasion is what nations manage best.

Bow to shrill doctrines, preach toleration even

Of the intolerant, rationalize

The irrational, embrace spiked breasts

In fearful deference to creed. We kiss

The bishop’s crozier regardless, even where

Its crook is manifestly crooked, turns

Bludgeon, advertises services for hire

To highest bidders. The cowering catamite

Awaits his turn behind the altar – Ask not

For whom the bell tolls, it tolls – Dies irae –

For thee. It is mortals – you and I –

Who grant sanctity to myths that crashed

In outer space, centuries before man

Took his tottering steps on lunar dust.

The adopted name of Piety is Ostentation,

Rivalry intense, who does it loudest, garishly

Obtrusive. Mere guidance texts from antiquity –

From alien worlds, schismatic tussles –

Turn compulsion to self-strangulate.

Walk the markets, explore the slums, peek

Through curtains of the affluent. The veil

Of attestation sinks ever lower, till infants

Yet unweaned now don the passport bib

And cowl that promise paradise. True piety?

Or adulthood speeded up, ripeness contrived

To meet demands of leering legislators?

We venerate hot gospelers. Their voices

Crack pulpits, shrines and minarets, unleash

Canticles of unctuous cant whose shards

Pierce wide open souls. T...

Table of contents

• Copertina
• Frontespizio
• Copyright
• INDICE
• Prefazione
• Nota della traduttrice: I formicai della lingua
• Parte prima
• Parte seconda
• Parte terza