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Mandela

WATCHING THE STORM

From Llandwyn Beach we watch – safely, distantly –

rain clouds, across the bay and the beginnings

of the Irish Sea, obscure the coast

and then the three mountain peaks, one by one,

of the Ll?n Peninsula. We hear thunder

trundle on the high ground and rumble

in the valleys, and see lightning fork,

furnace yellow, in the ash grey clouds.

 

Watching a storm at such a calm remove

is like two scholars in faux panama hats

watching the past, observing history.

The tide is much further out than ever;

low rocks exposed we have never seen, brown

with rack, adorned with limpets, mussels, clams;

Caernafon Bar ghostly beneath the waves.

We have been side by side on Traeth Llandwyn

at least once almost every year

since August ’62 – the month Mandela

was arrested, and Marilyn Monroe died.

 

We had walked from Newborough village

through the plantation of pine saplings

to bind the dunes, keep sand from barricading

doors, occupying the cemetery.

We were alone that first summer’s day,

the wide, embracing strand entirely ours.

 

The wind shifts suddenly with the tide.

We pack away our novels – Colm Toíbín,

Anne Tyler – and fold up our chairs. We pass

a large jubilant family gathering

setting up a windbreak and a barbecue.

As we drive along the metalled road,

through what has become a forest, the rain falls –

wipers flick it away.

 

 

 

THE MUSEUMS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read583 views

For Sizwe Vilakazi

 

ROBBEN ISLAND, CAPE TOWN

 

Except when the Atlantic fog surprises,

from high ground in the city the island

is present like a leviathan,

its lights at night like white phosphorous,

a place of banishment since the first ships,

among seals and penguins.

 

DISTRICT SIX, CAPE TOWN

 

Razing its streets, clearing this cosmopolis

of Asians, atheists, Blacks, booksellers,

Buddhists, Christians, Coloureds, cooks, Hindus, Jews,

musicians, Muslims, seafarers, Whites,

this is what it was all about – the racial

myths, the scorn, the humiliation,

the torture, the killings – to justify

the theft of property.

 

APARTHEID, FREEDOM PARK, JOHANNESBURG

 

Beneath the Pillars of the Constitution,

in the gardens the weaver birds are knitting

their elaborate nests from grass and reeds

precariously over water.

 

Inside is the Mercedes workers hand built

for Mandela, and a BAE designed

troop-carrying Casspir, mine and bullet proof,

to patrol the townships.

 

HECTOR PIETERSON, ORLANDO WEST, SOWETO

 

When the school children took to the dirt streets

in their uniforms and walked as one

towards the dogs and the guns and the police,

did each of their rulers secretly know

they were finished – not then or that year

but in time however many they maimed,

and killed and tortured in front of cameras –

yet kept it to themselves? Did they believe

really that righteous anger would, could

be suppressed forever?

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FREEDOM

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.