DEMOLITION JOB REVISITED
breaking rocks off-shore
out on a flat precipice
in the Atlantic
have
written that poem
wrote it
years sgo
am coming to grips
with what it is like
to feel
alnost broken
but now
roll the film back
yet further
recorded history
years of
home video
the Sun this day
brilliant beyond brilliant
as horrible
an irony
as it is to say
my Mother’s voice
am overhearing
telling someone eager
to listen
they knew what
this place was like
they knew what they
were coming to
did they not know
what to expect
front page
back page
centrefold spread
Greek chorus
gossip horror
the shock
the shame
character assassination
and they
or rather he the husband
having Army training
explosives, sabotage
blowing up
things behind Nazi lines
now
out there consorting
with the men of shadow, figures
in the night
feared
shape – shifters
blowing up pylons
disrupted the sacred electricity supply
and me
that night all night
hearing the Indian Ocean waves roaring in to
crash on the shores of False Bay
so much Sun here, Sun
Sun
Sun for everybody
this man and his
accomplices
attempting to take
this Sun
away
this
brilliant Sun
of white and golden beach sand
horrible to say
****
sixty years
and we have crossed them
in a heartbeat
so much of that time
faintly remembered
not even
taught in schools
(sad that
somehow we
have so relegated history)
but now
a different narrative,
a whole different narrative
a whole different way
of thinking of ourselves, this place
and how
we came here
stifled, imprisoned,
imposed our colonial mindsets
stuck our future in tiny cells
on an island in Table Bay
for long
bitter decades fearing
no hope of solution, no path
to a liberation
that migh
allow redemption
a moment of memory
viewed
with
a self-
forgiveness
graced by the acceptance
of the perspective of great change
****
and here we are
my dear, absurdly conversing
in the light of all those years
democracy waiting
in the wings, or rather
on an inhospitable island
time
become its true essence
as pure
duration
imprisoned consciouness
until
it was not
you born
in the year of its ending
of the release
salvation
far
from its memory, vague
on its history
of the swirling eddies and currents that
despite every counter-
possibility produced
a dawn, a new
day
and now
history has done
a demolition, removed
those back-then voices
that spoke with such
blind conviction,
presumed authority
as
it slowly, inexorably
whittled me away
ground me
pulverized me
all
that could not be ship-shaped
grist to that mill
cut
down to size
****
But hey, not so fast!, hold
those horses
hang on
if not a New York minute
then a
Cape Town moment
but across
land and ocean
the old monster
has
found lease of life, more
hideous incarnation
the drive to inflict the worst
of which we are possible
on fellows
of our species
as they, we
did back then
would have done to you
(and now this voice
those voices
who do
they belong to, what
are they saying?)
someday
truth and beauty, long
liberated
going to here abide
poems 2 die for 