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MICHAEL S. HARPER Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday [“Live in the Body, Long As You Will, Madiba”] Qunu, South Africa: “one of the greatest figures of the 20th century.” I would dictate this to you by keeping my hands off the secretary (no piece of furniture is a “secretary” in the British manor: she would be alive) I know only a little about imprisonment: 1962 at Pico Station: 11 11 ’62 (“Paradise Lost” by John Milton with me; Book IV the devil’s kingdom, mine) I gave up on the self at that interval; my brother in another cage— same crime (so little faith in self I thought three Indiana gangsters [white] were worth insult) I tried to put them in hell all-together (meanwhile you sought justice for the whole world) I tell you this in privacy of my own hell-hole (trying to break out to repair & restore my soul in body) I have met the solution: she is kind and smart: and can smell evil (she tells me about “Alaska” and the Inuit: all in island-camps shrinking) You know the ‘Snow Lamp’ I speak of written by master-poet, Robert Hayden 42 ✦ MICHAEL S. HARPER (the discipline of life after death imprisoned in bad govt: our prophets of space in song) Somehow I will celebrate what you have earned in discipline (she who somehow walks beside me will save all I have to give in your world-view) This is the praise poem in your Xhosa tradition (she who will save me praises you as well) MICHAEL S. HARPER ✦ 43 ...

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