Deep rumbling thunder echoes round
The southern Malagasi hills as ancient
And primordial earth calls back Madiba
For its own. Rains of blessing tumble
Down in thankfulness for such a life:
What hammer on a broken rock or surging
Wave upon a prison shore could break a spirit
So imbued with human dignity and hope?
Then overwhelming storm erupts
And hurls to earth its terror-laden bolts
That split and crackle unpredictable
Against a blackened sky: as did
The racist terror of a state gone mad
In search of unattainable security.
So did a people rise in stark revolt
And rising, with Madiba, paid their price.
Now nature's synergy of opposites
Conspires to breathe a cataclysmic
Shuddered breath, to open
Cosmic gates of love, and welcome
Home this champion of a better way,
A way that will not offer hate for hate,
But rather bears the pain, and through it
Finds humanity's redemption path.
On hearing the news of Mandela's death,
In Madagascar, December 2013
