Roy Joseph Cotton – September 11, '53 – March 10, '85

Roy commenced writing poetry during his latter school years. He read prolifically and was passionate about music and was a devote to Bob Dylan. He wrote many plays or "Musical Paintings" as he called them, and was also busy with two works "Multimythicum" and "Girlpools, Whirpools, and other gusts of Twirling Hair". He wrote from the security of a warm, close family in a comfortable Cape Town (South Africa) suburb. Yet most of his huge output of poems reflect a consuming angst. It was an angst which drove him to search for peace throughout books, music, writing, and religion, and it led to ultimate despair. His highly idiosyncratic way with language and the intense pressure of his emotional and spiritual concerns make his poetry compelling and disturbing reading. His untimely death at age of 31 cut short his promising career as a poet.

Laughing Xhosa Patients Gathered Around A White Baby

LAUGHING XHOSA PATIENTS GATHERED AROUND A WHITE BABY

Their laughter is as flagrant
as an apple slit by the sun.
Lightdaggers penetrate the
pram that looms like a
cherrymountain overlooking
the mirth. The baby does not
whimper at the cloudless sky.
Why should he? No misery brushes
the brow of the fields whence
these patients come. There
are no luxuries, only laughter,
to assuage the sickness of the
veld. The laughing figs are dry.

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