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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