The day is dying in a local town

Rose petal pink, orange tingeing into white-grey
the evening twilight fades away,
the soldiers, from general down,
the lawyer, the city lark, accountant, the office clown
are disseappearing into the enclosing dark,
the homeless man, the vagrants sit smoking
in the municipal park,
with a few mucho men joking
in the packed bar, the evening star
glitters her hello, shines down
across the hugely deserted town.

Crème liqueur, dark red wine
are whirling in glasses of lovers,
mistresses, in the hands of men,
some lovely women
and a few local swine
who cavort and dine
and some are cold as cadavers,
intent on getting more

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poem by Gert Strydom
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An elegy for South Africa

Weep South Africa
as you are no longer my country
and I live here
as if I am
from another planet

as part of a small minority
in a country where dark Africa
declares murderers as heroes
and act like barbarians
and dance and scream.

At a time the orange, white and blue
streamed proud over you
and people at work,
school to parliament
bended their knees to God

who was their supreme leader
right through hordes

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poem by Gert Strydom
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Under fire at home

At times your were extremely happy
and impulsive, sometimes morose,
withdrawn or suicidal
trying to hide from the world
or sometimes even aggressive.

Your Manic-Depressive Psychosis
needed a scapegoat
to whip, to burn with molten plastic,
to cut and stab with a knife
and to shoot at with a gun.

You told me
that you had cheated me
with another man
while I was busy
with the computer
and smashed your heels down
on some software
breaking compact disks and started

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poem by Gert Strydom
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Let South Africa be our country again

Let South Africa be our country again
and South Africans from all over the world
stream back,
to dream here like before,
to hope, to wish
of a place
not bordered of by burglar bars
where people can stay free
before God and man.

Let merit and respect be present
and people receive what they deserve
rather than expecting affirmative-action
and mercy from others
and the whole world
and like in the past
let us successfully do our own thing.

Let opportunities really exist
to be free in work,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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Six o’clock on a Friday morning

It’s six o’clock on a Friday morning
and I wait for my bus
and across the street,
the lights are burning cheerful and yellow
in the square and dome shaped windows
of the state library
and I wonder what documents are kept there

Street hawkers sell newspapers and sweets
in front of the Pretoria News,
while passengers are already
catching busses in rows.

There’s an icy chill
that hangs in the morning dawn light
and there’s a skew pointed obelisk
that is in front of the high court chambers
and a newspaper heading
talks about the recession
that is blowing hot and cold,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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The farmer and his wife (Sestina)

A girl was lying down flat on her back
with a straw hat at eye height over hair,
she was sun-struck, curling and fair
with a rain cloud ominous and black
drifting in a blue sky and a small track
meandering past and it needed some repair.

Some of your makeup is in need of repair,
there’s a guitar bag slung over your back
where you walk pass the girl at the dirt track
with the strong wind frizzling through your hair
and the sky is already turning black
but the evening up to now is fair.

Slowly you walk past the local fair
with some of the stalls needing repair,
the guitar you are carrying is black
and you walk straight on, do not look back
at the whistles of some men with long hair
while home you take a narrow long track.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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The dance of the wind

I

Round and round
I see her skipping dancing and turning
between lumps of sand
that blows up rejoicing, where she is turning about.

She is shaking her hips,
calls the leaves, the flowers and trees
drawing fluttering lines of sand
swishing drops out of streams.

The game gathers when she sweeps past,
stand with nostrils pointed
as worshipers, lost in her worship
while grains of sand whipping against them

and she is cheering glad,
runs past crossing them.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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News Report

Only one person survived the attack,
when three black men with machineguns
killed the farmer, screaming loudly: “come here you bitch, ”
bursting into the house, kicking her, stripping her clothes off
and they acted as if totally insane.
On the floor she was tied up tightly
where they raped her, shouting: “you Boor whore.”
In the hospital she cried without end,
could hardly face reporters for the interview,
are without her possessions, husband and country and feels dirty.

She will never forget the black rapists,
even when praying to God,
as long as the killers still are alive,
there’s something burning in her like festering wounds
and only a grave is left to the honour of her husband,
in thoughts she is again swept away,
it feels as if every black man is watching her,
nothing can be trade for the life of her husband,
she strongly considers selling the farm,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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The first dragon (sestina)

They went to find a thing that belched fire
a killer, a dragon what could it be?
To defeat it, to win they did aspire,
to set the people from its terror free,
it was huge as it could never tire
and where it went, there was only agony.

Those brave humble men were of all fear free
were like a mighty force that did aspire
to make men godly, as t no man should be,
to snatch from that beast it’s devouring fire
and to bring to it just death and agony
and in this quest they would not tire.

Yet all of the great brave men do aspire
to in the unknown find knowledge free
to test skill against the beast and to tire
to measure if plans full of follies be,
later to chance, to fight using its fire,
even in using if there is only agony.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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An African experience (in reply to Agostinho Neto)

That night it looked as if
the whole of the horizon was ablaze,
men were beating the fire throwing huge shadows
waving with arms outstretched
with the acrid smell of burning palms trees
filling the night air
and the fire was still spreading.

A row of Bailundu were carrying their possessions
were already fleeing, running away
as if they could outrun the blaze,
chased on by a strong wind
the kind of thing setting the hearts,
the minds of men alight,
taking possession of everything
and raising fear in non-believers
of party politics of freedom
by force, by the barrel of the gun

and even the coloured girl

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poem by Gert Strydom
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