Letter #18
Dennis Brutus
[This poem is read by the author. ]
I remember rising one night
after midnight
and moving
through an impulse of loneliness
to try and find the stars.
And through the haze
the battens of fluorescents made
I saw pinpricks of white
I thought were stars.
Greatly daring
I thrust my arm through the bars
and easing the switch in the corridor
plunged my cell in darkness
I scampered to the window
and saw the splashes of light
where the stars flowered.
But through my delight
thudded the anxious boots
and a warning barked
from the machine gun post
on the catwalk.
And it is the brusque inquiry
and threat
that I remember of that night
rather than the stars.
20 December 1965.
Dennis Brutus also reads Marilyn Buck’s “One Hour Yard Poem.”
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