Send me off a sign you sigh from memories,
Beyond a distance farther than horizons,
After times that may not have existed.
So the mind and brain will say …
Surely all this may not even have just happened.
This letter of yours my hands might have written,
This photograph only a Jane Doe from lost limbo.
But, through the ravening of reasoning and rhetoric,
I trust my dementia to show to me the groundless truth
That only a psychopath of love would dare to advocate.
Whenever reason tries to lie, as deep design dooms it to,
I take a lesson in faith that will not fail,
Before or after prophetic roosters crow,
And think of what love would do, if it was Mandela.
When tried and threatened and tormented
About the lawfulness of its stubborn dedication,
It would not flinch to save my soul from jail.
When limestone as white as loss of memories
Could turn it blind and make all hearts equal,
It would still discrete the hues in washed out whites.
When, at last, offered the bribe of seductive freedom,
It would recall the conviction of convicted hearts
And choose the liberty of seclusion and obsession.
This is the man I want to be, the Mandela of love,
In my own lesser measure,
For twenty-seven years and more,
Until the white and the black
Like man and woman
Are united, or not.
And so, understand you all,
I will stand for no corner to turn,
No show that should go on or what.
To all the kind and discerning friends,
Do not try your persuasion of happiness on me
Or waste the wisest words on my folly.
And do not cry for me,
In a spell of compassion or panicky alarm.
I am doing fine and happy in my own way,
Safe in the habits of weird customs and rites
In which I find the honour of my life,
Like Mandela once proved.