Blood River (In Answer To Don Mattera) Poem by Gert Strydom

Maybe forever the blood river remains red
as a token of the thousands killed,
who came to destroy, plunder and pillage
while they madly were beating their war drums

like they did to Piet Retief and his men,
but by His almighty hand God intervened,
helped a tiny band of civilian men
with flintlock weapons to defeat

the tens of thousands who rushed with assegais
and killing batons upon them
and when the British army faced the same enemy
years later with Martini-Henri rifles at Isandhlwana

and with many more men formed an unbreakable square,
that square buckled, was swept away
while death came to them

but still thousands of white people in South Africa
are raped, tortured to death and plundered
as if barbarianism still remains,

as if a pact with the almighty God
means nothing, while black men
trample the freedom of others
and rob what they do possess.