8 Remembering Nelson Mandela
Published on Mujeres Talk on February 18, 2004
Inés Hernández-Ávila
I wrote this poem for Nelson Mandela in 1988 because he truly moved me, all along the path of his life as I began to know about him, and his spirit will continue to move me, always. The poem speaks for me of what I think of him. He was a great Spirit who came to this earth to be Nelson Mandela, and he kept the radiance he brought with him from the spirit lands of the ancestors. With the example of his life, he “lifted us up,” as my own Nez Perce elder, Albert Andrews would say. I have read the poem at literary events, but it has never been published. On the occasion of Mandela’s death, my dear colleague, Jualynne Dodson asked, on the Ford Foundation Fellows listserv, what the impact of Mandela had been on the Chicana/o community. I sent her my poem, from my own Native (Nez Perce) and Tejana perspective. As I re-read what I had written in 1988, I saw that everything that I wrote for him all these years ago, still holds true. And I did write the poem while listening to Abdullah Ibrahim’s piano composition, “Mandela.” Ibrahim, moved by Mandela, composed his piece, and I was moved by the beautiful music for this great human being, this Maestro, who brought his light to the world. It is a poem from my heart.
For Nelson–Leader, Tribal Person, Elder*
Summer 1988, on the occasion of Mandela’s 70th birthday, when the South African government offered him a six hour visit with his family
Oh Mandela, Mandela
I sing your name
in the name of all peoples locked in and up
in their very cells
weighed down by all the forces
that do not want their hearts light
and spirits lifted
Nelson, Nelson
Triumph is a sweet song
the one you know
saxaphones jubilant for your spirit
concentrating
in your space
to will your conscious waking
sleeping dreams
for all of us to see
And it is hard, Mandela, Mandela
Six hours offered you with family
with Winnie and your daughters
six hours to hold each other
gulp in every detailed facet
talk with hands eyes ears mouth
nose smiles tears
as if the heart of the very mother earth
would burst with joy at such a moment
but this joy cannot be
it is, as you say, not possible
for you are not alone
but one of oh so many whose pain like yours
meted out minutely daily
seeks to engulf you in despair
This visit offered is not to them
but to you
And what is six hours in the face of terror centuries old
horror with the face of most intentional genocide?
Six hours more or less of time
when in those same six hours
Children, little children
sit, like you, in other prison cells for their “subversion”
When heads are cracked and bodies wracked
across the landscape of a continent that is yours theirs
A motherland keeps count of each heart battered to a bloody pulp
to stop its count of life
And you know, too, that count
So you stop the maddened offer of a visit
What would you have said, Mandela, Mandela?
“Shall we have tea, Winnie?
Daughters, rub my back, I am so sore.
What shall we talk about?”
And in the next cells casually inflicting itself
in studied vehemence on seemingly countless others
the obscenity of racial/cultural boundless hatred
Nelson, Nelson
A visit?
We are visiting for you all over the world
for you and with you in our homes your face shines
from the walls of our hearts
Poets gather to sing for you
Peoples gather to struggle with you
Workers pass the light of your name from mouth to mouth
Races, classes and sexes unite for you and for the people
Children learn of you and of the brave children
through whose eyes and spirits we find courage
Agelessness is where principled commitment is born and lives
Even in the splattered, broken bones of death
that wants so badly to detain the march of liberation
in all its splendor
Mandela, Mandela
you are real
The people you stand firm for are real and true
The visionary will outlast the cynic, the impotent and depraved
It is a matter of time
Only a small matter of time
The freedom spirit is soaring from heart to heart
around the world
To stop for six hours for convenience?
No, Nelson, Nelson
How you knew how time is precious
How you knew to keep on soaring
Oh, Mandela, Mandela
Keep on soaring
*With thanks to Abdullah Ibrahim, because this poem was written to his composition “Mandela.”
©Inés Hernández-Avila 1988. This poem was first published in 1988 in Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, 17 (1): 94-96.