The Saint and the Sinner

a poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

When Mandela came out of jail
and was elevated to a living saint
his wife Minnie was relegated to a sinner.
For years the liberals had tried to make this
unwilling subject into a chaste Madonna,
but she is a free spirit that loves
and hates in equal measures.
Now they shouted foul,
smashed the icon
and exposed a lonely, fragile human kind.