Police intimidation

Today while in Springs
walking on the sidewalk
on my way to home
there was a police roadblock

put up right over the main road
just at Werda School
where you leave the shopping area
where eight armed policemen were standing

and when I got a call
from a wrong number
the one in the middle of the road
rushes to me; saying that I have taken a photograph of him

and the whole lot of them close around me,
I am even grabbed
with a hand into the back of my pants
that holds onto my belt,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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When Days Get Long

I

When summer days get extremely long
the sky becomes a much deeper hue,
a myriad of birds fill the cobalt blue,
constantly singing their gorgeous song

it is as if everything do belong
to the coming spring, are singing true
like some beautiful birds and insects do,
while colourful swarming in their great throng

over the gentle meadow and the valley
filling the tranquil grey evening sky
softly singing a sweet kind of medley
while in jubilance they still do fly
over fields of hay and fields of barley,
sunny day after sunny day pass by.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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About Flowers And Trees

I

Why did the chrysanthemum wait long
to open it's quivering twisted rays?
When other flowers are gone it grows strong
in these much more colder wintry days

with cups making blossoms like anemones
some seen as feathery, plumed, or spidery
growing big or smaller in shaded tones,
in the winter portraying nature's imagery

in bronze, brown, purple, red, pink and white
with a single or semi-double blossom
growing to man's and the Creator's delight
when ripe makes growing very unwholesome.

Why was it not sprouting, rising, growing
at the beginning of the lovely spring?

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poem by Gert Strydom
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When in history, stories and poems I read (Sonnet Corona)

(after William Shakespeare)

I

When in history, stories and poems I read
about the greatest, the most fair persons
with the remarkable lives they did lead,
of knights guarding ladies for some reasons

then in you my lovely darling princess,
I see in everything, even your brow
more beauty than pens of old did express
and in the lovely looks that are yours now

is such exceeding glorious, awesome grace,
that all declarations prefigure you
up to this very moment in time and space,
are just substitutes trying to hold true,

to you the world is waiting as if ready,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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On a Close-up of Louis Esterhuizen, on His Poem “Winnie”

So tell me Louis, you allege:
“I went to look at the remarks
found in his biographical sketch:
“I love the work of various poets
and my favourites are AG Visser, Eugene Marais,
Ingrid Jonker, D.J. Opperman, N.P. Van Wyk Louw,
William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, John Keats,
Robert Frost, W.B. Yeats, Yahuda Amichai,
Hannah Szenes, Stevie Smith, Dorothy Parker
and even Homer.””

Further you say: “With the exception of a few names
under the English favourites, all the Afrikaans poets are experts
whom he probably encountered at school,
if a person looks at the verses on his page
you realise that Mr. X has never grown past the incidental
school-contact...In this he is alas not unique.”

Still you are the great master
where it comes to the works of Homer,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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White mine worker’s song (in answer to Don Mattera)

At their jobs beneath spinning wheels
next to yellow mine dumps
and the small train track
after non-payment of many months salaries
people’s lives cannot now turn back
while the mine owners are black

as a man takes the last sight
of the stars gleaming above him
before he hangs himself
on the tree in his garden
only death welcomes him
as he has lost any way
of making a living…

[References: “Mine worker’s song” by Don Mattera. “Num spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said in a statement on Thursday that the union was outraged at hearing Aurora’s commercial director Thulani Nogbane telling the committee that all Num-affiliated members at Grootvlei and more than 80% at Aurora’s Orkney mine had been paid...Aurora director Zondwa Mandela told the committee that illegal miners, acid mine drainage and the termination of a water pumping subsidy by the Department of Mineral Resources as well as involvement by the trade unions Num and Solidarity, were to blame for the mine’s cash flow problems…”Num is pleased that a successful application by the department to obtain another compliance order has been handed down, ” said Seshoka, adding that this should force Aurora to pay outstanding salaries. Solidarity’s Helping Hand project visited the NG Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) Strubenvale, Thursday providing struggling workers with much-needed food hampers, as well as feedback on the portfolio committee meeting. Aurora management has declined to speak to the press.” The Springs Advertiser Wednesday,20 April 2011.

“The need for aid to workers of Aurora Gold East Rand is stronger than ever, following the recent suicide of Marius Ferreira. Fifty-two-year-old Ferreira, a respected fitter in the mine for many years, gave in to the pressures of ongoing non-payment of salaries over the past 18 months. Taking his own life by drinking ant poison, he passed away at Far East Rand Hospital on March 29, along with the last inkling of dignity and pride he once possessed. A loving father and husband, Ferreira’s death devastated those who knew him – most of all his wife, Susan. A resident at a retirement village in Krugersrus, Susan’s struggle to come to terms with her husband’s death has only being heightened by the ongoing struggles that she is now forced to face alone. “They went from a comfortable living – Marius earning on average R16000 a month depending on overtime – to one of pure struggle, ” explains a close family member, who prefers to remain anonymous. “They were forced to sell everything. They were forced to move to the retirement village as they could no longer afford the house they were in. They lost their cars and were eventually at the point where they even had to sell their bed linen and cutlery just to put food on the table, ” she adds. Ferreia’s death appears to have sparked a string of potential suicides, with no end to their seemingly never-ending struggle in sight. Johan Cronje and his wife Chané*, together with their three children; aged 11,10 and six; are on the same dark road as Ferreira – Johan having attempted to take his own life no less than three times on Thursday evening. “I was busy in the kitchen when I went looking for Johan. I found a rope tied on a noose already set up outside, ” explains Chané. Calming her husband down, Chané kept a weary eye on him through the night – not daring to sleep for fear of waking up to find his lifeless body. He attempted to hang himself twice more that night. “We were comfortable once. Never would we have expected to find ourselves in such a position, ” says 32-year-old Chané, tears threatening to break. A qualified winding engine driver,36-year-old Johan’s R18000 salary allowed Chané to fulfil her role as a full-time housewife at their Groot Vlei Village home, caring for their two sons and daughter. Losing their vehicles, furniture, dignity and hope as salary problems persisted. Johan’s failed attempts to find alternative work is considered the main reason for his suicide attempts…The couple is R48000 in arrears on their home, recently receiving a eviction notice. Chané says that the last payment received from Aurora was at the end of January – a meagre R1800,10% of one months salary.” The Springs Advertiser Wednesday,11 May 2011. ]

poem by Gert Strydom
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Experiences with God

I

You make all things new
I realized when I watched the Southern Cross tonight,
that like always holds something magical for me,
maybe I was so carried off in the daily dispute

of my own grey existence that I absolutely
did not notice that You, hold fold Your hand over us,
that Your beacons burn bright and are never growing faint.
Even if situations is how acute

and Moscow, Rome, Washington and Pretoria
are all places where Your light is falling upon
where people are created in Your image,
where people rejoice, are jubilant, cry and complain,
and with innumerable people
You are present as the almighty God.

II

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poem by Gert Strydom
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The Cassinga jump

Fear and tension was written over the faces
of paratroopers next to,
in front and at the back of me
when the red light
began to flash in the Hercules
and we went to action stations
still skimming barely over the tops
of taller trees at about two hundred feet
and most of us had two weeks earlier
been home at our civilian jobs.

One paratrooper vomited
right over me in yellow stinking
half fermented food
and the retching smell
made me nauseas as well
while the aircraft pitched steeply
with its last-minute manoeuvres
coming to jumping height
of eight hundred feet.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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In the Highveld

(after Toon van den Heever)

I

In the Highveld with the sky cobalt blue and open
where rock rabbits, steenbok and baboons revel,
you see the wind skipping through the long grass
and you can still believe in God and His angels,

the rain gathers with thunder
where through the open spaces you can see far into the veldt,
you are astounded by the beauty of flowering proteas
and you still can realize your dependence

but when the city’s rumbling becomes too much,
the jacarandas start flowering in the streets,
buildings of steel and concrete start to curtail you,
you dream about wild flowers appearing everywhere

and it’s the places of a child that you miss,

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poem by Gert Strydom
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Experiences During War

I

When this evening comes between us
and outside the rainstorm fall pattering,
with thunder reporting like cannon shot
let tranquillity find us then

and let us go away from the world in this holy hour
with joy and peace and endless longing
and let the suffering and pain disappear,
let us then take the best out of this short time

and let our lives come past the turning-point
while the war for others goes on
and even if we are wordless
let our bodies meet in flesh and blood,
let we find some internal joy
before we have to greet each other again.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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