Sunday, December 8, 2013

Madiba

December 6th, 2013

Today as I walked through a foggy Sakura Park where Louis CK filmed a scene for his television show, I held Carolyn Forché's landmark poetry anthology "Against Forgetting" and read a quote by Nelson Mandela on the back cover.  It said:

 "Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality - thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard.  Carolyn Forché's "Against Forgetting" is itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.  It bears witness to the evil we would prefer to forget, but never can - and never should."

Seven hours later, I learned Madiba had "gone home".