Poem For Nelson Mandela On His Latter Years Poem by Frank Meintjies

Go hard, go easy;
the hills set
in the folds of an orange afternoon
a country rises from the mist
in the morning

ah, rolihlahla
who has taken the seed
that you have sown?
did roots germinate
as tendrils of young minds?
do children, some plump & many wasted
smile & nod, do they know?

the people, the times, the lives
those hoping, those without hope
the literate & illiterate, those with a light in the eye
the hunger, the want
the weariness from despair of the millions unborn
you came & to them
you spoke words
of truth & relevance

the child in you
fought with sticks
the young man donned boxing gloves
& later (there was)
a street-fighter
for freedoms of a people

your great work
is begun
your great work is a tall tree
on a hill
your exploits have reached a pause
on the crest of the amotola

a figure in the mist
that looks like you
like the man
from the house of dalindyebo
mouths words
isixhosa, afrikaans, isizulu, setswana, sepedi, sanscrit, song of the khoi…
so many tongues,
the languages of love
eyes to the distance
to the spaces & gazes within

[ in this dream, i am a bird
bearing a twig
a green slip
in its beak ]

a man
wearing a barbed-wire crown
a shirt woven from veld flowers
& black pants, neatly pressed
a tall man stands on a hill
looking out
on a sea of land — mzansi, afrika
... the world?
calling, signalling, beckoning, waving?
‘for now, my work is done, ' he says