»
Archives
»
Open Poetry #48
»
June 16th
| Open Poetry #48 |
|
June 16th |
|
|
OwlSA Member Rara Avis
since 2005-11-07
Posts 9347Durban, South Africa 
|
JUNE 16TH 16 June 2013 In television and Internet snatches of now and Madiba’s Long Walk To Freedom that rip my gut and gush my tears I learn of the horrors that were around me as a child and even as an adult that I truly didn’t know. These things were hidden from us for the most part but something must have trickled through to me, for I remember three times but only three (though I hope there were more though that would guilt me more) that I was awakened and aware and did something miniscule and none of them mattered or helped, nor did I take it any further in investigation or action. I have blood on my hands for not knowing. Don’t reassure me, please. Grant me that dignity, though I don’t deserve it. Ignorance is no excuse. Children can open the eyes of adults if their own eyes see, and we under-estimate the capabilities of children so much. They see and know and feel and are capable of an inexplicable compassion often far more than an adult but in their developmental stages just don’t know how to express it. Often they lose that capacity when they grow older as is so perfectly explained by Antoine de Saint Exupéry in The Little Prince. The first awakening I remember was at about the age of five around 1950 when we were visiting a farm in winter of some or other relative of my father’s. Farms had a series of gates to keep the cattle in and at each gate would be groups of little black children to open the gates for meagre pennies so the occupants didn’t need to get out of the White Man’s Car. All I remember is a one little girl in a purple jersey full of holes and I said to my parents that she must be very cold. My mother – and this from a mother – said “They are used to it.” I remember how the shock of her words silenced a further attempt at a reply from a child of about five. I should have offered whatever jersey I was wearing or had packed in a case if we were staying more than the day. I should have pursued the matter further than that too, but I didn’t. I should have known then and later as a teenager that it was more than public benches and bus stops and buses labelled some for Europeans as we were called then and some for blacks (“nie-blankes” in Afrikaans), but that too I should have pondered and questioned and investigated, but I didn’t. The second thing which may have been the third - which came first is fuzzy in my memory - was asking my mother when I was a teenager why people were against one person one vote. Her reply was that “They would outvote us.” I think I must have asked her why that would have been a problem, but if I did, I don’t remember her reply, possibly because it shocked me more than the they and us. Again I did nothing more. The third (or second) was writing a hate poem to Verwoerd in 1961 when I was 16. Again, I did nothing more. I wish I still had the poem. I remember it wasn’t good artistically, but it was real and passionate. I hid it in my secret place – There was a large gap under the third drawer of my built in dressing table under my window and flanked by two tall narrow built-in wardrobes. I had to take out the big deep drawer to get there and put it back and I had to do it when my mother wasn’t there otherwise she would have heard it and known of my secret place. I know I hid two other poems there, but I don’t know why I hid any of them. Perhaps I was mildly afraid of the political implication of the Verwoerd one. I doubt that it was for fear of my mother because she wasn’t in the least even vehement in her views let alone militant and that is possibly the greatest horror of all – that her almost apolitical view was the view of the average moderate white. She didn’t need to be. Whites were sitting pretty and didn’t need to think. She probably didn’t know either. But how could we all not have known - or known and kept quiet? A more likely reason for hiding my poems was that my mother didn’t think much of any of my poetry. But why did I hide only three? Were the other poems also political? I don’t think so. Were the others love poems that my mother would have mocked? Is my memory playing tricks on me and were there not two other poems? Why do I no longer have the Verwoerd poem? Is it – and are the others - still there? Do the current owners still have those built-in U-shaped cupboards around what was my window? Or did they take replace them? Did somebody find my poems? I hope they read them, but they probably didn’t – probably scrunched them up and swept them away when they destroyed it all if they did. How can I be so selfish, so self-absorbed, so insensitive as to ask these questions on June 16th? Perhaps that is THE ANSWER. It didn’t affect us (well, apart from our souls) so we believed the little and the nothing that was in the newspapers and on the radio. What a cross to bear! Owl In South Africa on 16 June 1976, 15 000 school children were protesting about being forced – not to learn Afrikaans – but to have to learn other subjects through the medium of a language that they hardly understood. It was a peaceful protest, but the Apartheid police turned it into a bloodbath and numbers of the children were killed, of whom Hector Petersen was one. Today it is celebrated as Youth Day which is a fitting tribute. I, as an advantaged South African, have learned more about Apartheid from the Truth and Reconciliaton Commission and reading Nelson Mandela’s “The Long Walk to Freedom” about my own childhood times, than I knew at the time. Today, there are still hardened racists of all races, but there are also many thousands who have opened their hearts to all races, though in some cases, it is simply a convenient strategy, but those are usually easy to recognise. I don’t like it, but accept that it is understandable if a person of another race who doesn’t know me, thinks that I am a racist. However it makes my blood boil if a racist of my own race, simply assumes that I am a racist because I am white, and I diplomatically or otherwise, remove that label from my person forthwith. Perhaps that is racist of me? How did I turn this note from being factual and anti-apartheid to being about me – again? |
||
| © Copyright 2013 Diana van den Berg - All Rights Reserved | |||
|
Gale Senior Member
since 2013-06-10
Posts 578Russia |
You always tell interesting stories. And this one awakes so many thoughts. "...on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." (A. de Saint-Exupéry) |
||
|
EmmaRose Senior Member
since 2011-03-02
Posts 1376Midwest |
Your poetry brings awareness and validation to the sad truths children know but are muted at the time by adults who 'know' more. Thankfully you are the generation of your family that helps break the vicious ugly cycle of rascism, both overt and subtle as the thoughts you display of 'o they are used to it' a wonderful write  |
||
|
OwlSA Member Rara Avis
since 2005-11-07
Posts 9347Durban, South Africa |
Thank you, Gale, for your kind words. Comme j'ai dit dans une réponse dans un poème de Bruce, j'aime tellement la sagesse dans Le Petit Prince d'Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Thank you, EmmaRose. I am blown away by your words. Yes, fortunately too, my children are very decidedly non-racists too. Owl |
||
|
Gale Senior Member
since 2013-06-10
Posts 578Russia |
I've just been thinking of these lines: "I have blood on my hands for not knowing. Don’t reassure me, please. Grant me that dignity, though I don’t deserve it. Ignorance is no excuse." And I think that knowledge use to come to us in time. So there are two kinds of ignorance, and the first is just some plan of God (nobody can know, see and understand everything from the beginning of his life); but the second one - masked cowardice. I couldn't blame any of them, but I think that people pretending not to see, what they were shown, have not enough faith in the good. So it's not the matter of guilt, but pity. "Comme j'ai dit dans une reponse dans un poeme de Bruce, j'aime tellement la sagesse dans Le Petit Prince d'Antoine de Saint-Exupery." Me too ) I never added my signature before I read your post today ) |
||
|
OwlSA Member Rara Avis
since 2005-11-07
Posts 9347Durban, South Africa |
Gale, I believe there is a third kind - the one that I was guilty of - not stopping to think, nor digging for information, nor doing finding it all out, nor doing something about it, when you have uncovered the situation. I am so extremely honoured that my post resulted in your exquisite Saint-Exupéry quote - and that is probably my favourite quote of the whole book. Thank you so much for doing that - and thank you also, for telling me. In 1983, I wrote a paraphrase in French (with acknowledgement to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, of course) of what the fox said to the Little Prince, to the boyfriend that I had at the time, who was French. The fox is my most favourite character in the book. Owl |
||
|
|
⇧ top of page ⇧ |
|
| All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format. | ||
