University of Cape Town, 1966

 

Not six feet from me,

Bobby Kennedy,

about two countries 

settled by the Dutch, British,

 

one went astray—

South Africa, I heard.

 

When I settled in America,

anti-apartheid meetings thrilled  me—

injustice anywhere is injustice

everywhere scrawled on walls.

 

Now I know The Talk,

of men who produce a video—

a black man running from their guns—

as “evidence” that shooting him

 

was justified.

Kennedy’s strayed country

(I looked it up)

was not South Africa.

 

Uprising

We felt South Africa from our feet, 

toes browned by common dust,

for all that we knew 

we knew by raw sole.

Worn paths among bush,

our quiet dread of snakes,

the hard reddish soil, 

rose through our loins. 

Avocado trees crept low,

branches for cradles. There,

when off our feet, we hung,

chatting till the sun blew out.

Durban 1965

Alan Paton, a writer, led South Africa’s Liberal Party.

Brylcreemed, he scowls,

invoking The Almighty. 

One Man One Vote.

The government threatens

to take him down 

to solitary the instant

he slips from fame abroad. 

Two men in hats and well-

pressed suits, backs to speaker, 

shunt from listener

to listener, as if collecting

in a church—big one’s notepad

open for interrogations, small one

kneeling with his massive apparatus,

taking frontal flashbulb photos. I think 

I’m followed home.