Still Collective Man Feels Compelled Poem by Gert Strydom

Have you killed a white today
is still being proclaimed
and old people are killed,
white farmers pay a price
and robberies and killings
in suburban arias
never stop
as if every criminal
in Africa
have being heading south

and some are taught
to take from others
as if the possessions
are their own
and in the doing of it
to maim, rape, kill
and slaughter
without conscience

and the killings
are still being done
by psychopathic people
who like animals in a pack
follow a new psychopathic god
proclaiming an insane culture.

Still collective man
feels compelled
to claim love
only for the self
and not to care
about love for another
while the affirmative flame
burns bright
in a beleaguered night
and guns and knives flash
on the defenceless

and the state, police
and maddened population
do not comprehend
that no one lives alone
and everyone eventually
pays the price
when hunger, poverty
and destruction
takes its course.

[Reference: September 1,1939 by W.H. Auden.]