http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/kewt/files/2013/10/Screen-Shot-2013-10-10-at-10.59.38-AM-1s9zi58.png

Chinua Achebe

Achebe in 2008

BornAlbert Chinualumogu Achebe(1930-11-16)16 November 1930Ogidi, Nigeria Protectorate

Died

21 March 2013(2013-03-21) (aged 82)Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Occupation

David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies Brown University

Nationality Nigerian

Ethnicity Igbo

Period 1958–2013

Notable works

The African Trilogy:–Things Fall Apart,–No Longer at Ease,–Arrow of God;Also, A Man of the People, andAnthills of the Savannah.

https://youtu.be/8e1JEYsmmZYhttps://youtu.be/8e1JEYsmmZY

https://youtu.be/8e1JEYsmmZY

This poem is taken from a collection of African nature poems. The notes tell us that the poet is writing here about the Spotted Eagle Owl, the Black Eagle and the Peregrine Falcon.

Read the following poem, then answer the questions after it:

Raptor

Sailing … impossibly high, navigating majestically on unseen mountain thermals or splicing* the landscape faster than a flighted arrow, punching a hole in the air with an audible swoosh … perhaps winging noiselessly, unerringly, through the blackest night, seeing sixty times as far as a man by the light of a single candle … whatever shape they take, Nature’s superlatives belong, aptly, to the raptors.

*Dutch splissen; akin to Middle Dutch splitten = to split AG Tebsin - 1993