Deathbed Poem by Gert Strydom

How surly it is where you still laugh,
when death waits as the ripe coming from life
that hurts, when the sun breaks on the last day,
when in vain you yearn; you grab on sheets, blankets
when cancer keeps growing,
when you bleed internally, while it's raining outside,
when nothing can stop the attack, can cut it away,
tears are flowing; here no thunderbolt will fall,
still you want to find the smell that sparks,
the spark that smells just like gunpowder,
it pains in your intestines but in this winter
you do not understand anything;
your throat burns, you want to hibernate;
you want to wander along, you are used up,
you dive into darkness reaching out further.