After revolutions

by Gabeba Baderoon

He is David
in the wheelchair
at the revolving door
of the hotel
where we met,
who accepts an invitation to lunch
with slow syllables
apologizing from his lungs. Later
we wheel towards the museum
across pavements which
measure the cost of
every revolution down Michigan Avenue.
Because I push, my bones fibrillate
in concert with his. My mind
struggles to dance with his,
which curls around ancient silks
but stumbles against the unevenness of memory.

As we wend our way
back to the door
of the hotel
where we met,
he recollects that
among the many minute
choices that pave his life
is one he made
manyhundredsofthousandsof
times — to light a cigarette.
"I am so angry at myself,"
he breathes, with the memory
of 50 years of repetition
savagely clear. As I walk behind,
I remember
a world in which youth
was composed of that dashing
oral flourish, which carried its own
atmosphere, lighting,
prescribed grammar, and style.
I remember
that this fabric of acts
knitted chic wisdom into common lore.
"I used to give them as gifts," he says
in astonished guilt,
clasping his head in a glance
downward.

"Everything confirmed that you
were doing the right thing," I comforted.
He knew
better, but I learned that
only when you’re
winding your way across
the narratives which pave
your world, listening to an audience
50 years later, do your bones measure their unevenness.

Gabeba Baderoon was a resident of Pennsylvania during the fall of 1999 as a SHARE Fellow at Pennsylvania State University, and is completing her Ph.D. in English at the Universities of Cape Town, South Africa and Sheffield, England. A research fellow at the University of Cape Town, she has taught poetry there since 1992, and began writing poetry in 1997. Important influences include the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Rumi and Louise Green (a South African poet). Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Illuminations, the poetry journal based in the English department at the University of South Carolina. She will give a reading of her poetry at the Claremont Colleges, California, in February. Gabeba has written on the media for popular South African magazines, and was an organizer of the inaugural South African Documentary Film Festival held in June 1999.