Ten O'Clock News

I mean the Cylons begin again. The siren in the night. The sound at the door. The shriek of and then the keening crescendo of faces split by paying the words Let's end this way. On this the I don't really know the importunate as rain the rice exhaled there was over the side of a knuckle. My eyes shall begin again. People of course see you and hear you as a poet. They also know you have been a prisoner and an activist in South Africa and sometimes you're also an embodiment of political movement in this country. How do all those roles

work how do you see yourself. Well I don't find any difficulty in dealing with these different roles I don't see them as compartments of my life. I think at the center as a single person concerned about human rights just as in the Americas in Africa and elsewhere. But of course there is the constant element of the sense of exile of struggling to change in order to bring about the rides. And I'd like to read something that deals with that. Each day each hour is not pain. Exile is not. And Titian there is no bleeding wound

no on the flesh severed and the secret is clamping down. Holding the lid of awareness tight shut sealing in the acrid searing stench that squalls the eyes swallows up the breath and fixes the brain in a wail until some soft lawyers question the prize. Who I can exclude awareness of exile until someone calls me one. The agony of it after a crisis delivery of the sea in the aftermath. My hot nose and exhausted calm

because sauces brains can't fight his recovery and resilience. The agony returned. I have been bedded in London Paris Amsterdam RUSSELL You know Frank all watched Soul grow and still my heart cries out Oh exile is the reproach of beauty in the foreign lands that vaguely from another because it echoes the remembered beauty. How do you describe so that Africa to people who haven't been there

and who don't know it. I think if you don't have a great deal of time you have to seize on certain high points things that represent the essence of the society the nature of the society. And there's certain events that represent I think what South that is about better than others I think of 1976 and the massacre of almost a thousand students shot down by the police. So with so ghetto outside Johannesburg. And I think a shop will in March of 1960 when men women and children were shot down running shot in the back and shot throw seems to me I kind of want to share point in South African history the commitment of a minority to kill if necessary in order to remain in power. And I wrote something about

Schott. What is important about shop though is not that 7 to die nor even that they were shot in the back or retreating and how defenseless and certainly not the heavy caliber slug that fall through a mother's back and run into the child and killing it. Remember a sharp little bullet in the back because it it still lies to oppression in the name of society more clearly than anything else. It was the classic that what the world was a part of it declares it's knowledge of

God the blood of the rich. Last of South Africa spittle in the dust. Remember the shots though. Bullet in the back. And remember the quench of little will to freedom remembers the dead and be glad. What is going on in South Africa now. Do you think one of the important things. It seems to me things are getting steadily and predictably was that the repression increase the number of people in the jail has grown the number of people who are executed by their

parfaits system. This is also the Crees and of course the resistance to the people as of the people to the oppression as you and quite recently the South Pretoria government executed. People who had a low caste system and I think particularly of a young man Solomon my srong who was hanged in Pretoria by the gallon and for whom I wrote his poetry as a tribute to him. And I'd like to read some of that. Singing He went to Wall singing he went to his death. There was sun in the glass St. and the clear blue sunlight of the high felt in the sun and the

bustle of the years. Oh and goodly things money in my buy for the rich and the white and the sharp crack of gotten five and screams of pain and bought commands on the side of falling bodies. Afterwards there was the long gray car of the rattling salute on the metal bar was the star shape of the gallows the defiant shout all a man's life singing. He went to war and singing he went to his death. On the road to the airport I search the new way to live find the dreaded I thought he was hanged at dawn or

night. His name his face his body his face the cell the Gallo pressed on my awareness like a nail a hand into my brain. Solemn flashlight till dawn till the time til the New Years the news that he had been hanged. Then the nail was pulled from my brain. And the drip of his inside my skull began singing. He went to Wall singing you were dead.

That's true. OK when they still wanted to fit in the places where I fumble those sounds I know you didn't fumble at all the illness. We may condense a little bit and then the pauses. But. Then above you want me talking and listening because it is fitting purposes. I think that was when are you going to read when you read some of those. All of those are some of that and other things too. I've talked to people last night and I would love yeah.

Well yes. Now you won't be listening Bob. Yeah you know what. I don't

think we carry his program. What does he do. Now. Yes. People see you and of course hear you as a poet. I think they also know for sure. I'm sorry to start this again. People hear you as a poet They also know you've been an activist and a prisoner in South Africa

you're also in some senses and a bottom of political movement in this country. Among those roles how do you see yourself. How do you describe South Africa to people who haven't been there and who don't know it. What is going on in South Africa today. What is one of the important movements. Ok about. That and if we could get a maybe a two shot from over there. What do you think. Yeah. If I watch of something that is so.