Winnie Mandela, she
the non-fiction statement, the flight into resolving fiction,
vivid over the landscape, a sumptuous sun
for our warming, ointment at the gap of our wounding, sometimes
would like to be a little girl again.

Skipping down a country road, singing.

Or a young woman, flirting,
no cares beyond curl-braids and paint
and effecting no change, no swerve, no jangle.

But Winnie Mandela, she,
the She of our vision, the Code,
the articulate rehearsal, the founding mother, shall
direct our choir of makers and wide music.

Think of plants and beautiful weeds in the Wilderness.
They can't do a thing about it (they are told)
when trash is dumped at their roots.
Have no doubt they're indignant and daunted.
It is not what they wanted.

Winnie Mandela, she
is there to be vivid: there
to assemble, to conduct the old magic,
the frightened beauty, the trapped wild loveliness, the
crippled reach,
interrupted order, the stalled clarity.

Listen, my Sisters, Brothers, all ye
that dance on the brink of Blackness,
never falling in:
your vision your Code your Winnie is woman grown.

I Nelson the Mandela tell you so.

(Poetry, 75th Anniversary Issue, October/November 1987, vol. 151, no. 1-2)

Reprinted By Consent of Brooks Permissions