PHYLLIS BECK KATZ, POET
  • HOME
  • About
  • Books
  • Poems
    • She Introduces Herself
    • In Between
    • Burning Bush
    • Ghost of Global Warming
    • Her Tulip Tree
    • Masks
  • News & Events
  • Reviews
  • Contact
  • New Blogs

POEMS/ Lesson at Robben Island

PictureNelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island
Lesson at Robben Island

When he was sixteen, our guide was imprisoned 
for five years for demonstrating against the pass laws,
treated as a criminal, chained and confined 
below as the ferry pitched and lunged its way 
from Cape Town to Robben Island, and captivity. 
He lives here now, guiding visitors on his journey
through two heavy iron prison gates, past the door 
to the censor's room where letters from home 
were inked or cut, news of the outside world 
trimmed to bland and empty words, past the prison 
court room and its harsh rules and retributions, 
its penalties of solitude and water, past the office 
where he became a number dressed in shorts,
no underwear or socks, through long halls
with barred doors, past Mandela’s high security cell,
with its slop bucket, small low table, its thin mattress
on the floor, and single worn blanket, past the outdoor 
court surrounded by high cement walls, through 
the dormitory for the school boys, where he stayed,
all told with a voice detached, distant, without judgement 
or emotion. I wondered at his reticence, discretion.

He cherishes, he says, the peace and beauty 
of the island, earns a good living to send home,
enough to feed his family well, and educate
his children though home is much too far away 
too costly to visit more than once a year,
and when I asked if it was painful for him to return
here even though free, he admitted that his mind 
sometimes opened to memories unbidden 
he would try to drive away, expunging words 
for fear, despair, hunger, loneliness, and I, 
who have tried to practice the same selective 
remembering, censoring those moments 
too hurtful to live again, nodded that I understood.

©Phyllis Beck Katz

Copyright 2018, Phyllis Beck Katz. All rights reserved.