Thursday, December 23, 2021

ONCE UPON A TIME

 



A crowd of witnesses –

confetti of banal pleasantries.

He was visiting

to receive another medal,

gifting its donor

a share in his honour.

 

He smiled, listened –

years of house arrest is good training –

waiting for the ceremony to finish.

 

Mandela was a king of myth,

a magician, he could make wrong right.

But mid-morning

his gait, his deafness,

his sheer oldness, left no doubt

that his sun would soon set.





His Holiness arrived in a motorcade

at Westmead Hospital, bodyguards,

a beneficent smile, sandals,

draped in saffron and red,

clutching abundant silk scarves

as gifts.

 

The staff assembled in hundreds.

‘What can we do’, one member asked,

‘about Indigenous health’?

Silent –  he hesitated and replied,

‘Education!  Education! Education!’

 

‘Should a surgeon operate,’ another wondered,

‘on a person who abused their health,

smoked, ate too much, boozed?’

He paused again then said, ‘I don’t know!

You’ll need to work that out!’

 

He held my hand –

warm, soft-skinned and firm –

back to his car,

I was excited –

like an adolescent lover –

but aware that we would

never meet again.


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