Somehow We Survive by Dennis Brutus
Somehow We Survive
Dennis BrutusSomehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.
Investigating searchlights rake
our naked, unprotected contours;
over our heads the monolithic decalogue
of fascist prohibition glowers
and teeters for a catastrophic fall;
boots club the peeling door.
But somehow we survive
severance, deprivation, loss.
Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,
most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender
but somehow tenderness survives.
ABOUT DENNIS BRUTUS
Born in Zimbabwe, poet and human rights activist Dennis Brutus grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and was educated at Fort Hare University College. His poetry collections include Salutes and Censures (1985), Stubborn Hope (1978), and Letter to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison (1969). Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (2006) was edited by Aisha Karim and Lee Sustar, and The Dennis Brutus Tapes: Essays at Autobiography (2011) was edited by… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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