A Country Poem by Gert Strydom

How can we determine what a country is?
If everyone of us wants to bind
a different meaning to it? Finding our own salvation
our own destruction in it?

That it is a region wherein we exist,
have to make a living, a region that is differentiated for us,
obtained through a struggle in which a flag and anthem
have to bind together but at times rather divide

a place wherein we are born
or of which with time we have become children
which we recognize as our own
and from which we are inseparable,

is no new knowledge, but that life sprouts
from the piece of ground that is own to each one,
that we experience the wonders
in our lives, times that we share with one another

and that we are together in this place and time
where everyone wants to be treated worthy as a human,
with the ability
to make a living on merit

wanting to protect that which we possess
and want to preserve it, trying to save our possessions,
lives and time
to keep to the length of days

where everyone can talk his own language, can write
uniquely perpetrate an own culture
and being able to safe the majesty
of nature for our children and their children

are some of the things that I claim legitimately
and by laws and oppression
the government
is showing me the door
so as if my own country
is not innate to me and only belongs to some?