An Epitaph For My Children Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Arthur Seymore John Tessimond)

Those that grew up from the cradle in my own chaos,
must not blame me for the hillocks full of wild-plums, medlar,
night-adders, puffing-adders and spitting-cobras

for their own frightening horse-racing right-through the ploughed maize fields,
for donkeys that oppose moving but suddenly start off at hell-razing speed,
against barbed wire rub off skin at a gallop or throw their riders down on rocks,

where my children dare each other to jump down silage pits five storeys deep,
where hayforks with iron-teeth lie and wait to piece anything
and then gambol and jell in pleasure while they do downward fall,

who with many friends chase Kittenel the angry pedigree bull into the crush-pen,
dare their lives on its back in a field where maize-stubble stand like spear-points
and do hit him with a little branch of thorns to enraged get him moving,

that crawls into porcupine holes with barking dogs,
following those beasts for their spikes,
that will follow each other into any hellish place as the leader.

[Poet's note: "Epitaph for our children" by Arthur Seymore John Tessimond.]
© Gert Strydom