Chinua Achebe – Benin Road
Things Fall Apart was published in 1958. It was an English-language novel by Chinua Achebe (1930-2013). It is viewed as the archetypal modern African novel, and the first African novel written in English to receive world-wide acclaim with tens of millions of copies having been sold. The novel’s title has it’s origins in the William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”
He says, “There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter… Once I realized that, I had to be a writer.”
Speed is violence
Power is violence
Weight violence
The butterfly seeks safety in lightness
In weightless, undulating flight
But at a crossroads where mottled light
From old trees falls on a brash new highway
Our separate errands collide
I come power-packed for two
And the gentle butterfly offers
Itself in bright yellow sacrifice
Upon my hard silicon shield.