[Zindsi Mandela,
23 December 1960
to 13 July 2020]
how like a plant she was
how just planted she was
when, in 1978, her book of poems,
Black as I am, was published
with photographs by Peter Magubane,
Foreword to it by Andrew Young
used to carry her book of poems, 8.5 x 11 Inches,
about with me everywhere I went
used to teach it, used to share it with my classes
recall having it while I taught
at Inagua All-Age School for two terms, in 1986
when exactly did I buy it/from where did I buy it
might I have purchased it from the bookstore
at Fisk University that I attended for a year
I loved those poems, I loved the author of them,
I loved the photographs that accompanied her poems
how I identified with the voice of that young,
female, South African, freedom fighter
somehow, all those years, I kept her as young
as she was when she penned the poems in her book
decades passed without a word about her or out of her
I myself a poet, unable to be quiet, unable to shut up
in the interim, she had grown up, mother with children,
her dad, after 27 years, released from prison
she and her sister whom she followed,
ambassadors, representing South Africa…
heard last night, on Democracy Now, that Zindzi,
Nelson Mandela’s youngest child, has passed away, at 59
what a blow to hear that, took my breath…
younger than I by 7 years and dead already
shocked and surprised but, my God,
between Black as I am and now,
what a massive tree she had grown into
though inside me I’d kept her 18
that voice, that child, that innocent
switched immediately from news I was watching,
located on YouTube, an interview, from 2018,
at the Edinburgh International Book Festival,
with Allan Little, where she was launching,
Grandad Mandela, a book about her father, for children
what a great spokeswoman she had evolved into
what titanic strength, what awesome confidence
oh, but how could she have escaped with input
from her parents, Nelson and Winnie Mandela
oh, but so soon she’s gone, too soon she’s gone
forces that fostered her, that shaped her,
have as well undone her
in what fire was she forged
was it that same intense heat
of being out there on the front line
that has undone her also
how unhappy I am to see her go/that she is gone
I must locate my copy of Black as I am
I must read it again - what an inspiration it was
unable to locate my first copy,
I located and purchased a replacement
from Amazon.com ten years ago
oh, but there is no second copy of her
available anywhere on earth, anywhere in this world
Obediah Michael Smith was born on New Providence, in the Bahamas, in 1954. He has published 21 books of poetry and a book of Six-word stories. At University of Miami and University of the West Indies, Cavehill, Barbados, he participated in writers workshops facilitated by Lorna Goodison, Earl Lovelace, Grace Nichols, Merle Collins, and Mervyn Morris. He attended Memphis State University, 1973 to 1976 and majored in Speech & Drama and Biology. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Dramatics and Speech, from Fisk University. He has lived and has studied French, in Paris, France. At Universidad de Costa Rica, in 2011, he studied Spanish. Obediah was the Poetry Workshop facilitator for the Bahamas Writers Summers Institute, in 2009 and again in 2011, at the College of The Bahamas. His poems in English are included in literary journals and anthologies throughout the Caribbean, in the USA, in England and in Kenya, and his poems, translated into Spanish, are included in anthologies in Colombia, in Mexico, in Peru, in Venezuela and in Spain. In 2011 and 2012, for five months, he lived in Mexico City. He attended Kistrech Poetry Festival in Kisii, Kenya, in 2014 and in 2015. He spent from 2014 to 2018 in 11 countries in Africa. In 2018, he attended Romanian international poetry festival, “Curtea de Argeş Poetry Nights”. His poems
are now included in that festival’s anthology, translated into Romanian.