In The Inner Square Poem by Gert Strydom

In the inner square
just outside the police station
a little group stands around a drum
in which coals are burning
and flames are shooting up
in the dark night.

Between them a man is standing,
holding out his hands
to get them warm
and above them the stars are bright
like lights in the night
but the moon
has a strange colour that particular night.

A woman constable walking past
stops and asks the man:
“Are you not one of those wild men
who are following the prisoner? ”

It’s as if the eyes
of every policeman around the fire
like search lights fall on him
and he shakes his head decidedly
and draws the cap lower over his head
to get hot and avoid their stares.

“I really do not know him. Do not even know
the reason why you have captured him. Just came
to get some heat from the fire
and what injustice lies in this? ”

The women constable frowns
and walks away with swaying hips
and he remark about the way
that she walks,
which makes the other men around the fire laugh

and through the open door
of the police station
he notices how somebody inside
hits the prisoner through the face
and it’s almost
as if he feels it in his own face.

“Friend, you are not from here
and looks just as ruff as him, ”
one of the constables says jokingly
and his tooth glitters white
for his own joke.

This time the man is much more definite
and worry is eating at him:
“No. Constables, if I would know him
by this time you would know me too?
You probably know
his accomplices? ”

A constable that was at the arrest
comes and stand at the fire
and the flames flares up more brightly
causing him to see the man
between them clearly.

“You talk in the same dialect as the prisoner?
Were you not at the arrest? Surely you were there? ”
Every policeman and even
some of those in the police station
is now staring at him.

“Truly, no. He is totally strange to me!
You cannot lay the guilt
of that man’s deeds onto just anybody.
Just because we maybe comes from the same place.
I can say under oath that I do not know him.”

His gaze catches that of the prisoner
and he sees love
and no condemnation
and on that hour, minute and second
a cock crows
and pain rips through him
that he has just betrayed the Son of God

and the man walks away from the fire
into the night, just blindly
and he cries
while rain is falling around him

and he wonders what it takes
to stand for the truth
while lightning bolts hits blue-white around him.