"Rode, Linda - I, A Living Arrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rode Linda)

"Home thoughts from abroad"

Suzanne Cox

There is a voice within me
that calls longingly for my home,
the country I hardly know.
It's the voice of my people
calling to me,
singing the songs of South Africa,
their homeland - and mine.

This homeland,
this place of my birth,
this home of my ancestors,
calls me back
like the moon pulls the tide.

(fragment)

Written by Suzanne Cox who grew up in
South Africa but completed her schooling in Canada

Robin Brooks - Battswood Art Centre

A portrait of '97

Ilan Chait

Clunk-lock. Doors are secure. Cell transfer for prisoner CHA 567.
Cross-check. Left bushes, blindspot, right bushes. All clear. Proceed
cautiously.

I travel down your gun-barrelled highways and along your concrete
vistas. The prison capital. With each house another damp cell. Your rail-
way tracks: ugly varicose veins squeezing your plasma along. A swollen,
diseased mass of blocked arteries and a heart that's pumping its last.
Shame, if only you had looked after yourself when you were young.

A chilly whiff of diesel fills my nostrils as, no more than two metres
inside the barbed-wire sanctuary, I stop. Request for valid identification
and authentication. Genuine white tag verified, I may proceed.

In some ways, South Africa, I think I should be thanking you. For
you are a true mother. Grooming has started in the home and by the
time I leave your training grounds, I will be the best prepared and most
alert young man this land has ever seen. All senses fully developed, the
finest reflexes, the ultimate edge.

Above all, you have taught me manners. Why, if someone should re-