MEDIAMAN

MEDIAMAN

What can I do: I cannot do what I can not. What can I say: rhetoric trips me up - I know it is too fast. Man was not made for the agony of the whole world; but still it comes and he must swallow it at one gulp. Man was not meant for pain at an universal level. It is too soon for that.

Suffering for himself, his friends and family, and the beggar who passes him on the highway is sufficient, at present, to fulfil his needs -

and the beggars! It is enough. And more is more than he can stand perhaps. It is too much. It is in his living-room too quickly after the deed. There is no time for him to say: It has passed now. There is no time for him to think it out. It goes shooting through him like a bullet, a flash of pain, and it sinks away and is lost; but to no purpose. - I must pray, both for Verwoerd and his assassin -

Nightly King Herod walks the air-waves. The innocent are slaughtered by his ten million television sets.

Does one escape? The air is filled with dying cries. There are no more children.

I dwell in the centre of the grey screen: a small glimmer of light, electrical or otherwise, like a bubble at the centre of an ice-cube. Immobilised, I am frozen by the world’s grief.