Train Ride Poem by Gert Strydom

Train Ride



On the rail tracts
trains past one after the other
at speed
and there are crowds
standing on the platform
and people pressing past each other
to get aboard.

I watch the confusion
and on the train
people loose their senses
and they press to seats
right through each other.

A man dressed in a black suit
tries to convert everybody around him
and stand and preach in the aisle,
with the holy book
that he opens at places.

What he is saying
passes me faster
than the scenery at the windows
and I see people unable to forget,
how the city devour their souls
and the man evidently preaches regularly.

Opposite me a man reads the Pretoria News
and a young woman
wants to know the time
while she bends forward
and I am able to see the crevice
between her breasts
and she winks
while the train picks up speed.

“Boy let they just invade my house
and then some shots will ring, ”
an obese man says
who wipes sweat
with a handkerchief from his shining face
and gives biltong
to the people around him.

To the front there’s someone screaming
in a foreign language
and I wonder if someone
is falling from the train
or rather being thrown off,
while the unconcerned conductor
takes the ticket puncher from his pocket.

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Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom

Johannesburg, South Africa
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