For My Brother (In Answer To Breyten Breytenbach) Poem by Gert Strydom

For my brother
that actually doesn’t know me anymore
I write this poem

and I know that the road
that I walked till here
was at times
greatly by the choices
that I have made.

Still, we stay one in loyalty,
one in blood and family relationship,
one when destiny closes its fingers
and maybe one in being lost
although we both
face different directions
and sometimes we search for a brother
at places where he’s not.

I sometimes walk alone on a dark way
and continually search for a star, a new sun
and who know what is waiting there?

Still, I am writing these words
to return to you,
to walk along through your valleys
to places where the sun hangs bright
where the sky is blue past the horizon
and let it always go better
than just well with you.

[Reference: vir my broer, in hierdie koue wêreld by Breyten Breytenbach.]