I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind. Francesca Lia Block
About This Quote

Nelson Mandela spent most of his life in prison. On Robben Island, he wrote poems that were never shown to the world. The poems are beautiful and spare, but they don't make sense. It's almost as if they are about something else, not about him at all.

They are not about the wind or the rain or the stars or anything our minds would find beautiful. They are about how he sees his own mind working—about what he thinks is important and what he thinks is trivial, about what makes him sad and happy—and how he will not be able to show these thoughts to anyone else.

Source: Baby Bebop

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