June 16th Poem by Diana van den Berg

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!

(16 June 2013)