Susanna King

The image of luxury cars that have been disregarded and left to be covered in vines reflects one of the poem’s messages: that symbols of wealth have no inherent value once people have abandoned them. 

After the Deluge by Wole Soyinka

Once, for a dare,

He filled his heart-shaped swimming pool

With bank notes, high denomination

And fed a pound of caviar to his dog.

The dog was sick; a chartered plane

Flew in replacement for the Persian rug.

He made a billion yen

Leap from Tokyo to Buenos Aires,

Turn somersaults through Brussels,

New York, Sofia and Johannesburg.

It cracked the bullion market open wide.

Governments fell, coalitions cracked

Insurrection raised its bloody flag

From north to south.

He knew his native land through iron gates,

His sight was radar bowls, his hearing

Electronic beams. For flesh and blood,

Kept company with a brace of Dobermanns.

But - yes - the worthy causes never lacked

His widow's mite, discreetly publicised.

He escaped the lynch days. He survives.

I dreamt I saw him on a village

Water line, a parched land where

Water is a god

That doles its favours by the drop,

And waiting is a way of life.

Rebellion gleamed yet faintly in his eye

Traversing chrome-and-platinum retreats. There,

Hubs of commerce smoothly turn without

His bidding, and cities where he lately roosted

Have forgotten him, the preying bird

Of passage.

They let him live, but not from pity

Or human sufferance. He scratches life

From earth, no worse a mortal man than the rest.

Far, far away in dreamland splendour,

Creepers twine his gates of bronze relief.

The jade-lined pool is home

To snakes and lizards; they hunt and mate

On crusted algae.

Biography:

Wole Soyinka is a 1986 Nobel Prize winner who has been imprisoned on several occasions for challenging the Nigerian government. He went into exile in 1994, and in 1996 he wrote The Open Sore of a Continent, a narrative account of Nigeria’s decline from post-colonial stability to military dictatorship. In 1997 he was sentenced to death and was later granted amnesty. Soyinka returned to live in Nigeria in 1998.

Analysis:

After the Deluge tells the story of a rich but corrupt man who once spent money in excess, impacting economic markets and setting global ramifications into motion. However, when the man loses his money, he finds himself living in a common village, reckoning with the wealth he has lost and the impermanent superficiality of his influence. The speaker’s objective point of view illuminates the indifference of the world to the subject’s fall from wealth and power. Despite being objective, however, the speaker is neither bland nor omniscient; the phrase “I dreamt I saw him” evokes a sort of wonder in the reader.

Juxtaposition is used to clarify the stark change in fortune that occur throughout the poem. One example is the recurring image of the swimming pool.  In the beginning of the poem, the speaker shows the profligate behavior exercised when the subject fills his “heart-shaped swimming pool with bank notes.” At the end of the poem, the author recalls this image, this time saying, “The jade-lined pool is home to snakes and lizards; they hunt and mate on crusted algae.” The contrasting images of the swimming pool represent the reputation of the subject before and after he loses his wealth and power, as well as showing how status symbols lose their value and are reclaimed as soon as they are abandoned, much as the subject is reclaimed by normal human needs at the end of the poem. The poet also uses the metaphor that “water is a god.” This device shows the shift in power over the course of the poem: in the beginning, the subject the one in power, but later, simple human necessities (ie., water) dictate his actions and desires in life. Notably, in the first half of the poem, the author uses enjambment to establish a choppy, breathless pace. The rhythm of the first section of the poem barrels onward, pulling the reader along, much like the subject of the poem barrels through life.

The tone of the poem is wistful but pitiless. The speaker focuses on the facts of the subject’s life, showing little outside emotion. However, instead of being cruel, the speaker acknowledges the emotional complexity of the poem’s subject, adding a personal dimension to the idea of corruption. In After the Deluge, the author conveys the idea that the meager benefits of wealth and power are not worth their detriments because power is corrupt, and wealth can be lost at the drop of a hat.

Sources

Poem: (www.blogs.worldbank.org)

Image: http://junkyardnow.blogspot.com