ROBBEN ISLAND
His cell, of course; breaking stones in the yard;
his endurance; his spirit; and his comrades’;
some warders and prisoners living there still,
in harmony, in freedom…
and these images:
the birds, teeming – African Penguins,
Crowned Cormorants, Cattle Egrets, Sacred Ibis;
part of the concrete wall of a cell block
made into a door on rails – ingenious, pointless;
Cape Town and Table Mountain gilded in the soft,
southern sun – a mere seven miles away…
Note: ‘Robben Island’ will be one of the next two stories to be posted in early January on:
SYLVIA SELZER PHOTOGRAPHER/STORYTELLER.
Pages:
By David SelzerFREEDOM
Even at Goose Bay, Alaska, changing planes,
there were people to greet him. He asked
who they were. ‘Eskimos.’ Mandela
remembered the igloos in the textbook
at the mission school. ‘Ah, Inuit.’
He walked to greet them in their common tongue.
Pages:
By David SelzerLOST
After the fluorescent shops and the snatched music,
the side street was damp and dark –
but a bag of chips and a manipulative adult
made the emptiness freedom.
Waterways were trawled and the usual,
time-dishonoured suspects questioned.
Down river, high tides returned her nine year old body.
The funeral cortège was a carriage and horses
and the local press was effulgent.
But gossip condemned her single mother,
living in a hostel on benefit.
The killer lived two floors down,
an estranged father of daughters –
a violent drunk, unemployed, unschooled.
Victim, mother and murderer
threaten the equivocal city.
Losers and losing
challenge its achievements.
Death is only one result of murder.
Remember sweet Fanny Adams – mutilated,
immortalised, profaned unthinkingly!
The murder and rape of children
seem beyond words, understanding, iniquity
– and another’s lack of love or the means to love
is out of our grasp, lost beyond finding.
Pages:
By David Selzer