I Am Captured Poem by Olalekan Ololade Sobande

: : : : : : .: : : COMMENTARY: : : : : : : : : .: : : : : One of the fascinating feature of Olalekan's short poems is the manner in which he manages to say great deal in short space by using symbolic image. In this poem, Lekan sets a scene as well as reflects on it. In this way he fulfils one of the best distinctions of lyric that of representing an intense emotion as an experience and at the same time as imaginative comment on human nature in general. In this simple but disturbing poem, cast in the form of a conversation between a haughty naughty child and his brother. Lekan touches on such perennial problems as loneliness, anxiety, uncertainty about the future and the humbling knowledge of the transcience of life. The finality of the brother's reply put a seal on the child's fate and underlines the child's helplessness. There is a strong plaintive and fatalistic note about this poem, clearly emphasized by the reply. The lyrical and elegic tone of the first stanza contrasts with the epigrammatic tenseness of the second stanza, which clinches the exchange and makes it