On floating in a pond

Sometimes when you are floating in a pond you will see only lily pads and reeds and wonder about the muck below and recoil. Why? They are natural; they cannot hurt you. And the clouds above you are beautiful. It's warm too. How else could you be floating in a pond?

On leaving things better

Did you come here? Are you leaving? Then your whispers and your labor will remain behind. If things are better than they were, congratulations! If they are less than you had hoped, was it your fault? Can you say, looking firmly at something, "I did that" and let your hand fall upon the rock in the wall or let the tree you planted cast some shade upon your face? Don't worry: in time your meaning for this place will be as water to the stream or rain to the cloud. Time washes away the grime and the paint, and soon, even the tree will be gone. But what is it to you if your work only remains as a whisper of things that were when things are better now?  

On the value of writing bad poetry

There are moments when only rhymes will help you sort through the fervor of your own mind. Write then poetry. You may not be Emily Dickinson.  But you will still feel the plank break, the snow crunch, the rage, the birds fly, and the fog on cats feet. Then you will be alive. Then you will be comforted. When all has turned to shit. Turn to poetry, pen in hand.

On being white in the Apartheid State

I don't believe we go back to normal life. I don't believe that at all. I think we who are repelled by violence feel the claustrophobia of a world closing in around us, squeezing out all air and light, and feel only able to stare in disbelief at the prison keepers who turn off the fans and close further shutters. No. These horrors are our culture; ourselves even. And I think we know it. And I feel nothing but disgust at my own cowardice, my own simple inability to do more than pen sentences, pray (if I could), and ask for help. Each horror is personal. Each one.