The media may have passed on to other obituaries, but the death of Eldridge Cleaver still has a particular resonance for intellectuals of his generation in the black community. We offer two pieces, one a memoir the other a poem, that seem to capture the respect -- and confusion -- that greet his life and work. PNS commentator Reginald Major is the author of numerous books including "The Panther is a Black Cat," on the origins of the Black Panther Party. Marvin X is the author of a just released autobiographical history of the black liberation movement, "Somethin' Proper," published by BlackBird Press.

When I heard Eldridge Cleaver was dead, I realized for the first time why he put himself outside the orbit of people, like myself, who were once his friends and comrades.

It came to me that everything meaningful he had done since leaving prison and writing "Soul On Ice" -- aside from marrying and starting a family -- had been in support of the Black Panther Party. In the early days of the Party he and Huey P. Newton were nearly inseparable. When Huey went to prison, it was Cleaver who organized the "Free Huey" campaign and designed the coalition politics which got the white left to support it.

In 1975, Cleaver, then in exile in Algeria, split with Newton. The widely accepted explanation of the break -- irreconcilable differences regarding revolutionary violence -- is simplistic, irrelevant. They fell out because Cleaver believed the Party leaders in Oakland were living decadent lives, betraying the Panthers.

This breakup, I now realize, sent Cleaver into another form of exile -- this time a spiritual exile. Talk about soul on ice! His essence went into deep freeze. Cleaver became his own opposite, banished himself into the ideological land of his former enemies.

My own discovery of the radical change in Cleaver's politics came when I was acting as his spokesman on live television. Cleaver called and asked me to appear on a news special set up by ABC to give him a chance to explain statements published in a Newsweek article -- a series of misquotes, he said. He wanted me to be there and stop ABC from perpetuating Newsweek's lies because I was a friend, media wise, and knew his thought processes.

The article was appalling. It had him denouncing revolution, praising U.S. military might, abandoning support of the Palestinians -- positions incompatible with Cleaver's thought. I said I would represent him and we agreed I would walk out if the producers of the program pulled anything that violated his, or my, political principles -- and he promised to hang up immediately if I did.

As Cleaver explained his remarks to Dwight Casimere, one of the few black faces on-camera in TV news at the time, I realized that any misquotations made him appear more left wing than he was.

When he finished and Casimere turned to me, I mumbled that Eldridge had been out of the country for some time, and was out of touch with political reality in America, particularly in the black community. I went home and wrote him a fiery letter condemning his political stance in the name of those who had followed him and been betrayed -- including me.

He came back to the country a few weeks later, and ended up in jail to deal with the court order he fled to avoid seven years before. When I visited him, he talked of new "contacts" and sure enough a nationally known right winger put up a million dollar bond for his bail.

After that, communication between us was minimal. I didn't care whether he was faking or not, he was a right wing instrument. When we found ourselves in the same room, we were formal.

In 1994, Cleaver was attacked and suffered a blow to the head that should have killed him or left him imitating a rutabaga. When I heard the news, I realized that despite our profound differences, I had no wish that he should die -- and that we, once the best of friends, should not let one of our deaths precede a reconciliation.

At first, his son Maceo talked with both of us. Then we had a couple of long interviews, in which he rambled all over his historical map. There was some slurring and he walked like a man who had suffered a minor stroke, but his mental faculties seemed intact.

He called once from Miami to explain that area was a gold mine for enterprising "Negroes." A few months later, he called to talk about his new job with San Francisco's Black Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco.

The last time I saw him speak was in 1996 at a Baptist church where he exhorted black youth to love the Lord and shun Communism.

It's impossible to deny a person's faith, to prove, as many of us believed, that Eldridge as a Christian was a sham designed to keep him out of prison. I always believed Eldridge did a lot of things tongue-in-cheek. It was much easier to appreciate this when it involved challenging Ronald Reagan to a duel and giving Reagan his choice of weapons, than to see the humor of being roped into a TV appearance on his behalf.

But wit was absent in the sermon. It was not a labor of love, but a job that had to be done.

Now that he's gone, I'd like to think that, freed by death from service to the right wing, he would revert to his position of thirty years ago when he questioned the validity of suffering in this life for gains after death -- the Cleaver who once theorized that, had Adam adopted the Black Panther Ten Point Program, God would not have put him out of Eden.

"Maybe those that made it across wouldn't want to mention such things to the Lord, so I'm going to tell him myself when I get there. Because if he tries to put me in hell and put some fire on my ass, I'm going to look around and find some beautiful people there and say, 'let's organize a Black Panther Party and a Peace and Freedom Party,' dig?"

Well, now he has a chance at redemption.