To stand in someone else’s shoes
Is not a possibility: for in this place
They wore no shoes.
To see what others saw, to miss
What others missed is also more than
Can be easily done:
For safety and the knowledge of prosperity,
Not fear and brutal separation
Become the cataracts to truth.
Across the teeming bay the utter
Beauty of the Mountain Table-spread
As nature’s sumptuous banquet-hall,
While on the Island, from the
Kitchens come, of Pap six ounces if
You’re coloured, four if black.
So now where brutal power once
Sought to crush the human spirit,
She, in her good time, rose up and
Quarried out of wickedness
A burning hope, and from a stone-built
Prison, a nation standing free.
After visiting Robben Island
Off Cape Town, South Africa,
May 2011
(Pap is one of the words used to describe
the staple, Maize Porridge)
