Classical Black

Abstract

[A] water-smoothed head of antiquity brought up from the depths, intact; basalt blackness the concentration of time, not pigment. Even the hair – black man's kind of hair – had resisted water and remained classically in place as a seabird's feather or the lie of a
fish's scales. (Gordimer 140)

English in Africa Vol. 34 (2) 2007: pp. 19-34