Andromache Poem by Gert Strydom

(After Charles Pierre Baudelaire, after Roy Campbell)

In my minds eye I see your valiant face reflect
at an ornamental pond just before Troy did fall
and of the grieving widow of Hector you are the subject
where you stand beautiful defiant and tall

and your crying face, your female grace, your bravery
comes back to me at a municipal park's lake
where from a black boy a lovely swan breaks free
where for the family pot he tries her to take

and I could have intervened in this kind of robbery
where the swan defiantly tried to the water to get back
but then that child was the image of poverty
and the will to intervene did with me lack

while that swan called out for help as if to the gods
after been recaptured with her head held high
but in this instance their intervention was at low odds
while she looked with a kind of dignity up to the sky.

From Hector your brave husband's arms as a princess you were taken
for his killer (Achilles')son Neoptolemus to be, a war-prize, a harlot
and night after night with dread for his pleasure you were awaken
where he was already married to Hermione and this was your lot

as if no change to this situation could ever come
while bravely you did face whatever destiny brought your way,
made a foreign place at great odds you very home
but in your heart you did for salvation pray.

To South Africa and Pretoria has come a change
which clenches my heart with great pain
and the Nigerian criminals and black concubines I do find strange
as little of the previous culture and the city's roots do remain

where out of choice they do act in this way
and the Nigerians here are criminals far from home
where on the street corners those black ladies stand day by day
while robbers and their henchmen do on the streets roam.

I think, also, about the beautiful young white girls who have to whore
in Pretoria and in this land with affirmative action to make a living
and about sad stories of women struggling there are many more
while black reverse racism does sting and mere existing

has become to some people a very hard kind of thing,
where some people beg on the streets, as they cannot recover,
while others pray that God will some kind of salvation bring
while those whites that still have work do not care about one another.

[References: "Les Fleurs du Mal: The swan" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire."The swan" by Roy Campbell.]