ROBBEN ISLAND
Morning soothes the cold sea
with yellow fingers of light
bandaged with mist.
Lost in the limbo of old storms
the gulls cry and float
like ashes from a dying fire.
Bare, still, blue, in the quiet sea,
the island rides serenely.
A flattened pearl in the beautiful
oyster-bay.
But its violence tears the sky
to screaming ribbons which descend
in thick horror on the land.
It is a mountain built over the
years
of small frustrations, misery, hate,
injustice and starvation.
Its roots are in the hearts of men
and in their bellies
and its darkness shuts their minds
before the night.
Oh cry out now, you violent stones
for I have heard the sunken thunder,
felt the earth tremble, seen the
light in the crater!
Soon it will come – the bursting
mountain,
The blood-coloured shouts will blot
out the sun,
spill confusion to the horizon and
stain the earth.
Ruth
Hartley District Six Cape Town 1965
Written
as I looked across Cape Town Bay at Robben Island and thought of
Nelson Mandela and the political prisoners incarcerated there. A
version of this poem was published in the ANC magazine “Sechaba”
in 1967 when I was in London.
