The Bus That Drives To Vryburg Poem by Gert Strydom

From Pretoria station
I take a bus that drives to Vryburg
to go and fetch a car.
Cornfields flashes past
and all of the people round me
tells a bit of the things that hurt.

One is going to a funeral because her brother died
and the bus drives on
with the road that stretches out in front of it.
Another is going to her parent’s home
she can find nowhere else to go
and is unmarried and pregnant.
The nearer we get to Vryburg
the more scared she becomes
and the bus drives on.
An Older man has lost his job
and restarts his career in Vryburg.

So everyone of us are caught
our own world with freedom that always stays away
and fate from which everything hangs
and I wonder when everybody in this country
will ever get a Vryburg.

[Vryburg= The name of a city in the Northern Cape province. Meaning place of freedom or free city.]