Nadine Gordimer

There is no woman like her...

When she was young, she was singularly beautiful

a  pearl awash with thunder compares...

her eyes, all gems

filled with controlled passion,

decked with a necklace

fit for Egyptian Royalty.

 

Much she suffered to give up her private life

for political causes,

documenting apartheid,

different and equal politics

where blacks would not make their own beer

where blacks were manufacteuring things...

 

if a black looked at a white woman wrong,

he may be accused of rape...

it happens in Europe and America too...

with Asians too

because Asians are the 3rd sex.

 

looking upon her was like looking upon a Sphinx

who was also a bodhissattva,

her writing

is so beautiful lyrical....

meeting Susan Sontag and Edward Said in a Chinese Restaurant

or talking about how white people

are going to want to be black

out of reverse-envy.

 

Her writing kept me alive

during Kafka-esque nightmares,

sleepless nights,

deathly dells.

 

She criticized fashionable Jews too

but her love of Israel was forever

and her Norton lectures were delirious symphonies...

 

Under death threats,

Under the terror of conformity and stupidity...

two forces that have shaped civilization

she was intensely brave and focused.

 

There will be no woman like her.

She's the only modern writer

I admire

but I tend to think

in her latter years

she may have entertained the thought

of becoming a

neoconservative.