I wrote this poem the day after Mandelas death, but it suits my mood right now too. Mandela As if a flower, glowing fruit amidst the twigs The birch tree bare on this December day It was just an orange streetlight peering from behind Dissolving with the winter grey Decide the sky’s now firm enough to flick the switch And gone the fruit, the flower, the warming flame Mandela, yesterday they spoke the news Recall that once his glow was just a match And many tried to strike its tiny form Coat its head with combat, lock its latch With the thoughts one saw in others’ bombing hands That trailed blood and fierce fight across the years From Marxist talk and training camps Kalashnikovs, the dead and tears First well-intentioned sowers, brave and bold In hostile soil toss their liberating seeds Though often it’s to later see the crops Grow blighted, overrun by poisonous weeds And who’s to guess how people wear their trials When fed a stingy ration, prison pain And if they’ll grow wider than those narrow cells Keep hearts alive and even know the gain That comes to separate the noble from the chaff And lights small beacons for each age As storms are tempered, wisdom flows In that alchemy of greatness, longed-for sage We ask a lot, seek heroes perfect pure Forget the lands that bore them, fields’ flaws Forget that winter rocks and sways the light And fog comes down and even heroes trip and fall Perhaps this only makes it dearer still That only human, yes, and yet do shine and learn And even from the harshest, poorest soil Can come good seeds and lamps that burn For all and promise calmer roads I know the Moscow tree, its orange bloom Illusion but could yet become the real thing Even if the spring is not due soon But come it does, for never do the seasons stop And we’ll always find a boat to cross the seas Bring light from prison islands back to land And hang it from the naked winter trees
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 09:27:45 +0000