Harvest: Part 7 of Idanre by Wole Soyinka

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 Harvest

Night sets me free;I suffer skies to sprout

Ebb to full navel in progressive arcs,ocean

Of a million roe,highway of eyes and moth-wings. 

Night sets me free,I ride on ovary silences

In the wake  of ghosts

Ogun's mantle brushed the leaves,the phase of night 

Was mellow wine joined to a dirge

Ofshadows,the  air  withdrew  to  scything  motions 

Of his dark-shod feet,seven-ply crossroads

Hands  of camwood,breath  of indigo

Night sets me free,soft sediments on skin

And  sub-soil  mind...

Dawn  came  gradual,mists

Fell away  from rock and honeycomb,Idanre woke

To braided vapours,a dance of seven veils

The septuple god was groom and king

Mists fell to mote infinities from mountain face

 Retrieved,were  finely  gathered  to  a  sponge

Of froth murmurs in palm veins,he rinsed

The sunrise of his throat in agile wine;I  took the sun 

In his copper calabash

Dawn,He  who  had  dire  reaped

And in wrong season,bade the forests swallow him 

And left mankind to harvest.

At pilgrim lodge

The wine-girl kept lone vigil,fused  still

In  her  hour  of charity

A dawn of bright processions,the sun peacocked Loud,a new mint of coins.

And those were all    

The night hours,only the  dissipated  gourds,

Rain  serried  foor,fibre  walls  in  parsimonious 

Sifting  of  the  sun,and  she  ...

Light  burnished  to  a  copper  earth,cornucopia

Fell in light cascades round her feet.

Our paths    Grew solemn as her in drawn eye,bride of Night

Hoard of virgin dawns,expectant grew her distant gaze 

And  Harvest  came,responsive

The first fruits rose from subterranean hoards

First in our vision,corn sheaves rose over hill

Long before the bearers,domes of eggs and fesh

Of palm fruit,red,oil black,froth flew in  sun bubbles 

Burst over throngs of golden gourds

And they moved towards resorption in

 His alloy essence

 Primed to a fusion,primed to the sun's dispersion

Containment  and  communion,seed-time  and  harvest,palm

And   pylon,Ogun's   road    a'Mobius'orbit,kernel 

And electrons,wine to alchemy.