Edexcel GCSE Poetry Anthology

The archbishop chairs the fi rst session
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
April 1996. East London, South Africa
On the fi rst day
after a few hours of testimony
the Archbishop wept.
He put his grey head
5 on the long table
of papers and protocols
and he wept.
The national
and international cameramen
10 fi lmed his weeping,
his misted glasses,
his sobbing shoulders,
the call for a recess.
It doesn’t matter what you thought
15 of the Archbishop before or after,
of the settlement, the commission,
or what the anthropologists fl ying in
from less studied crimes and sorrows
said about the discourse,
20 or how many doctorates,
books, and installations followed,
or even if you think this poem
simplifi es, lionizes
romanticizes, mystifi es.
25 There was a long table, starched purple vestment
and after a few hours of testimony,
the Archbishop, chair of the commission,
lay down his head, and wept.
That’s how it began.
Ingrid de Kok
Collection D
65