Your logic frightens me, Mandela

Fotografia de Gregory Fullard

Your logic frightens me, Mandela,

Your logic frightens me. Those years

Of dreams, of time accelerated in

Visionary hopes, of savouring the task anew, 

The call, the tempo primed

To burst in supernovae round a “brave new world”!

Then stillness. Silence. The world closes round

Your sole reality; the rest is… dreams?

Your logic frightens me.

How coldly you disdain legerdemains!

“Open Sesame” and—two decades’ rust on hinges

Peels at touch of a conjurer’s wand?

White magic, ivory-topped black magic wand,

One moment wand, one moment riot club

Electric cattle prod and club or sjambok

Tearing flesh and spilling blood and brain?

This bag of tricks, whose silk streamers

Turn knotted cords to crush dark temples?

A rabbit punch sneaked beneath the rabbit?

Doves metamorphosed in milk-white talons?

Not for you the olive branch that sprouts

Gun muzzles, barbed-wire garlands, tangled thorns

To wreathe the brows of black, unwilling christs.

Your patience grows inhuman, Mandela.

Do you grow food? Do you make friends

Of mice and lizards? Measure the growth of grass

For time’s unhurried pace?

Are you now the crossword puzzle expert?

Chess? Ah, no! Subversion lurks among

Chess pieces. Structured clash of black and white,

Equal ranged and paced? An equal board? No!

Not on Robben Island. Checkers? Bad to worse

That game has no respect for class or king-serf

Ordered universe. So, scrabble?

Monopoly? Now, that…! You know

The game’s modalities, so do they.

Come collection time, the cards read “White Only”

In the Community Chest. Like a gambler’s coin

Both sides heads or tails, the ’Chance’ cards read:

GO TO GAOL. GO STRAIGHT TO GAOL. DO NOT PASS ’GO’.

DO NOT COLLECT A HUNDREDTH RAND. Fishes feast,

I think, on those who sought to by-pass ‘GO’

On Robben Island.

Your logic frightens me Mandela, your logic

Humbles me. Do you tame geckos?

Do grasshoppers break your silences?

Bats’ radar pips pinpoint your statuesque

Gaze transcending distances at will?

Do moths break wing

Against a light-bulb’s fitful glow

That brings no searing illumination?

Your sight shifts from moth to bulb,

Rests on its pulse-glow fluctuations—

Are kin feelings roused by a broken arc

Of tungsten trapped in vacuum?

Your pulse, I know, has slowed with earth’s

Phlegmatic turns. I know your blood

Sagely warms and cools with seasons,

Responds to the lightest breeze

Yet scorns to race with winds (or hurricanes)

That threaten change on tortoise pads.

Is our world light-years away, Mandela?

Lost in visions of that dare supreme

Against a dire supremacy of race,

What brings you back to earth? The night-guard’s

Inhuman tramp? A sodden eye transgressing through

The Judas hole? Tell me Mandela,

That guard, is he your prisoner?

Your bounty threatens me, Mandela, that taut

Drum-skin of your heart on which our millions

Dance. I fear we latch, fat leeches

On your veins. Our daily imprecisions

Dull keen edges of your will.

Compromises deplete your act’s repletion—

Feeding will-voided stomachs of a continent,

What will be left of you, Mandela?

Wole Soyinka