Charl-Pierre Naudé A little distance
I look at the photograph in the newspaper.
A woman in a floral dress gets an award
from Mandela, from the first president himself
for groundbreaking work in Aids research
and for trying to save the lives of thousands,
probably millions of mothers and their children.
She cuts a striking figure, no doubt helping
to push up circulation figures today.
If the report is anything to go by,
she’s the type of woman anyone would die to meet.
Just yesterday I dropped her off at the airport.
Now this one-way distance communication.
This wrong end of the telescope.
She told me over the phone she thought
about me amid the glitter. (More likely just before,
or after.) Thank you, baby. So I finally
get to be close to the great man myself.
A little distance, we said. We need a little distance.
Pleased to meet you, Mr. President.
No problem, I can talk. Yes, I chose that dress.
If it wasn’t for me, she would have bought the other one.
But more importantly, I chose that which is underneath.
There is still so much being covered up in this country.
Our history, where we come from. This beautiful woman.
Despite valiant efforts by men like yourself.
(I shouldn’t be talking like this to an eminent man.
But they said that in the dark years, too.
It is time for complete openness now.)
That dress is no good for anything, Mr. President.
It is sheer propaganda from the previous era.
A painted truth, a photostatted zoo garden
in which the birds don’t fly and the tigers don’t breed.
A cage in which the children of her womanness
write never-ending letters that never arrive.
It is time to release the Congo jungle
that beats in the post office stamps.
Aren’t we a free country now?
She should have met you in the nude.
A great man like yourself deserves no less honesty.
She should have been allowed to walk naked,
her breath rising and falling in anticipation
of meeting you like that in her diva yeast,
if our Constitution is worth anything.
In fact, I see her strutting to the podium right now.
I see her going there decked out in all her freedom.
And everywhere in the art shops the unborn parrots
escape from their wrapped-up palettes.
Her contours moving, like the gills of a fish.
The congregation clapping, their hats blown off.
Their moustaches stolen, their coats
sown together. One nation, one octopus.
Stunned. Then she steps out of her shell.
The hair cropped short. Ha!, the hand
not in place. Botticelli runs to cover.
Making me think Mr. President, making me think.
She does the same thing in her bedroom when
she walks like a forest from clothes captivity.
Those two one-eyed bush-babies stuck to her trunk.
(Poor Greenpeace, never anywhere when it matters.)
How that silken python lies down to swallow
its little rock-rabbit that never stops struggling against the gulps.
The glittering python, bulging against the net;
and the net’s elastic racquet
in turn imitating those expanding
and contracting scales.
Imitating the whole universe.
The Eye of God.
Space and Time.
All of them in cahoots.
Freedom. Sweet, sweet captivity.
And standing there so vulnerable
(she doesn’t look it but I know she is),
the only thing that would shield her
eventually is that Prize, Mr. President.
The one that shields us all. Love.
She holds it there. And her sex
beats behind it like a frightened moth
while confidently she smiles at the cameras.
So if there’s still time,
tell her to come back to me.
You’re a man of words, Mr. former President.
I am glad you can see her now
the way she should be seen by all.
You can see for yourself,
that the naked truth about this good woman is
that she is simply, absolutely beautiful.
So human, and endangered as well.
Stuff the world. And all its good works.
I miss her tonight. Stuff all the children.
(Sorry, I didn’t mean that.)
I am the only child that exists.
Isn’t that the definition of a child?
A little distance.
Is what we need, we said.
How a little distance can grow.
There is a hybrid mulberry tree
that stands in the garden.
I listen to the squishy sounds
under my bare feet as I walk
underneath it back to the house.
I climb into bed, smudging the sheets.
Tomorrow she will be back in the city again
Engelstalige bewerking door de auteur van
’n Klein bietjie afstand
© 2002 Charl-Pierre Naudé / De Gekooide Roos
Over Charl-Pierre Naudé
Charl-Pierre Naude is 'n joernalis, skrywer en digter van Johannesburg, Suid-Afrika.Charl-Pierre Naude is journalist, schrijver en dichter uit Johannesburg, Zuid-Afrika.