Remember me as deep Insight
a naked Presence raw and authentic
as my grey ashes float blue waves
like when the tiny slave boat
reached Cape’s shores in
a country of Rainbow colours
remember my humour which you
could not get and only laughed long after
Remember my willingness to stand before
the cruellest of interrogators for
the freedom of my country
drinking water from a prison cell’s
lavatory pot as pointed rifles were held
in mock shoot and I said “Shoot
but freedom will still come”
Remember my crimson wisdom dancing with
Excalibur in the dead of black nights
my jigsaw quilts made from scraps
and the way I wheelchaired to a
washing line that did not exist
baked bread without yeast
how I could tell a cockroach to leave
and she scattered
Mostly remember that I came and left fulfilled
knowing that Divinity is well pleased with me !
[Poet’s Note : this is a wry autobiographical memory written in traditional pirouette verse viz. 2 quintains, line 5 & 6 repeat, which is the toe turnaround. I wanted to write a narrative of a weird syncopated vignette, when I was knitting a pink mohair jersey at the time of my imprisonment. I reduced the narrative to a pirouette. When in prison, one of my interrogators was knitting the EXACT jersey in the exact colour & exact wool ! ie. in the final analysis, (in retrospect) everything in human life can be reduced to a pirouette, a turn-around dance ! ]
knitting a pink jersey
mohair with cables fine
to process flying thoughts
political activist
south africa turmoiled
south africa turmoiled
security police
came with casspirs and cuffs
interrogation chamber
police knit jersey pink
~~~~~~~~~
OLD AND NEW 2 : BOARDROOM
Jackal preyed on dimpled dolls
smiling gold on slender wrist
nosing down a slippery path
scowling schoolboy promoted
beyond his mediocre castle
Mammals sat on polished teak
coiffed moustaches, tonged peaks
feeding unclipped grapevines
old words and wounds
eating raisin muffins
Falcon scribbled notes
watching eyes serving
newly ordained masters
legalese from a previous
age flowed from fine shifting
fingers in a cage
Overgrown thyroid sat there
his infantry lost in teeming
townships blaring transistors
interrogators of another time
peeped at a polished tiger-eye
on his seat
Minds like noisy tools
drilled atomic holes in
the boardroom table
beaded headdresses falling
from fat oozing french seams
They will learn Christmas carols
in mint retirement homes
when the table losses its legs
©GhairoDanielsPoetry1997
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