ENOCH JOHN Poems

Hail Nelson Mandela!
Hail thou black Prince
Who has suffered so;
Hail thou icon among men.
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Think of the patriarch Jacob travailing thru the night with an angel,
Of David's penitence after he had taken Bathsheba from her spouse,
And of the many saints of old whose life came to epitomise prayer.
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Your life in preview, a blank page of nothingness?
Your life in preview, a voluminous book of achievement,
Or what then is the road you would travel,
In this time in this day of a billion opportunities?
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If I can smell the aroma of the beautiful flowers,
And walk on the beach and feel the sand tickle my toes.
If on a cool day I can walk among the trees and admire nature,
Or if I can sit by the esplanade and watch the waves break on the shore, or
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What came you out to see in this wilderness, a reed shaken in the wind, or
A blank page before the poet's muse appends his own ecriture?
How can I change the sombre and melancholy into dancing feet?
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I write today not of Cheops and his Great Pyramid sitting with majestic ease at Giza,
Nor of the brave warriors of the Aegean.Achilles of ''fleet-footed''fame; and
Hector that trainer of horses or Odysseus and his trunk of tricks like the Trojan Horse as example.
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In deep contemplation have you ever sat down,
And in your meditations, considered what a mystery is?
The prophet Ezekiel saw in a vision a wheel within a wheel,
But what about a parable within a parable,
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I sit at the computer just to write this poem,
For to me to write a poem is to do my duty,
But what can I write that Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley,
Or Milton or one of our modern poets like Heaney and Walcott
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When with mystique painted the sky gods a canopy of bright orange,
As if Cinabue had daubed the canvas of the sky strange,
For parading with majestic beauty on their exalted celestial stage
White puffs of clouds like angelic wings and their holy visage
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In the mists of the morn
I hear voices, distinctly.

In the mists of the morn
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