The simplicity with which Brutus speaks is what makes his voice so powerful.

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Sima Lad

The simplicity with which Brutus speaks is what makes his voice so powerful.

Dennis Brutus is an internationally known poet whose poems centre on his sufferings and those of his fellow blacks in South Africa under apartheid. His outspoken protests against apartheid led to an 18-month prison term on Robben Island. He has written many poems regarding his imprisonment and the horrors of the regime in South Africa. Brutus exhibits a restrained artistic control when writing his poems, which record his experiences of misery and loneliness as a political prisoner. His language and versification are simple and direct. If anything, the hardship and suffering are understated with the result that the experiences described are conveyed with even greater force. The natural elements and symbolism used by Brutus assists him in writing his poems. Using such pleasant descriptive features to describe the violence, gives it even more impact.

“Cold” is a short and compact poem with the title itself referring to a form of discomfort felt by Brutus whilst being imprisoned. The opening lines of the poem convey more of the distress experienced by Brutus.

“The clammy cement
sucks our naked feet”

The sensory description of the cement sucking up the moisture from their ‘naked feet’ seems as if life itself is being extracted from the individuals. His choice of words is extremely effective as he uses ‘naked’ rather than bare. This implying that they were deprived of their human rights and dehumanised. With the additional description regarding the surroundings and actions of the prisoners, ‘the stubbled grass wet with three o’ clock dew,’ - ‘stuff with our fingers the sugarless pap into our mouths,’ the situation concerning the prisoners appears to become more dismal. The fact that they ‘stuffed’ the food into their mouth conveys that they were given a limited amount of time to eat it; furthermore, they had been deprived of their food since then. Additionally, the ‘three o’ clock dew’ signifies the early hours in which they had to wake for their long journey allowing the reader to understand the harshness of their regime.                                                        Throughout the poem, an impression of the surroundings is gained to be nondescript due to the insipid colours used to describe the surroundings. The ‘rheumy yellow bulb’ that ‘lights a damp grey wall’ gives the notion of everything being weak and the prisoners being in impoverish conditions.

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Brutus does not state any of his emotions, whether they are of anger, anguish or sorrow – it is left to the reader to interpret the graveness of the conditions. Brutus simply writes the state of affairs he is in, however, it is only until the closing stages of the poem does Brutus mention the fact that his ankles and wrists are chained. One wonders why such a significant factor is stated at the end of the poem rather than the beginning of it. It shows to a certain extent that Brutus does not want to gain sympathy from the ...

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