Giotto's Campanile Revisited: at the University of Cape Town (with apologies to Guy Butler)

Alone in the ivory tower how I grieve for all the motley, unheroic, appalling students who squander privilege and leave coffee-cups behind: grieve, recalling how exiles at what bitter distance bled. Then, loud into my small airless room falling, amplified sounds, voices, music braindead: how casually they flirt; flaunt bare skin; discuss crime. The deep base beats to nothing thoughts in my head to reduce me, as them, to an unawareness of time, while over the town, trebles, twos and ones, vacant clouds soar like words that don’t rhyme, images unseen, thoughts only of guns in films and fashion, heads turned from open skies to quivering loins – not to daughters or sons. All sounds diminish, die. The near throb dies. They scatter to clubs, where false joy is poured in shots and pints, and bottles cover drowsy eyes, but bitterly, distantly I bleed for these too-young bored soon old uneducated fools – O mother city, may minds aware of others’ suffering be restored: teach myopic youth tragedy, fear and pity.

 

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