Death is portrayed as a physical, mental and religious act, the culmination of a journey to wisdom. The mention of hills, earth, rainfall and paths all have special significance in Yoruban culture, and Soyinka's metaphoric references to them serve to emphasize the poem's depiction of death as perhaps more valuable than life. The poem addresses the last survivor of a group of five men who are being executed in Soyinka's prison. It attempts to comfort this last man's fears, to quiet his terror as he awaits his turn to be killed.
Death thereby becomes an action, rather than a reaction as it is in Western cultures.
In the poem one dies actively rather than passively. In other words, death is life's punchline. Death in the poem is more fruitful than life. He is the dying man who drags his feet on the way to the execution, who staves off as long as he can the inevitable moment when his life must end. Soyinka claims that life is not as valuable as that.