Gunpowder And Romance Poem by Gert Strydom

Tired of crawling along in congested traffic in my car
on any one of the two the Pretoria-Johannesburg freeways
or having to take the old road
today I experiment by taking the Gautrain
which is a rapid transit railway
linking the airport and has got nine other stations
between Pretoria and Johannesburg.

At the Gautrain Pretoria station
adjacent to the main Pretoria train station
the passengers have the new excitement of trains
running at high speed between cities
and it seems to be the in thing to travel in this way,
some attractive females catch my eyes
and only lonely one, who are on her own smile at me,
it's high summer and she looks lovely
in a white blouse, gray skirt and court shoes,

small groups of talking people move past
while I buy a Afrikaans newspaper, ("Die Beeld")
and a Styrofoam coffee cup
of which the coffee is boiling hot but great
from the new café
before the train rushes into the station.

Some Policemen are on patrol,
where they walk up and down
chatting with each other,
passengers do disembark
and I take my seat
along with a crowd of happy people,
the friendly blonde takes a seat opposite me.

An old man (probably a professor)
running somewhere near to seventy
sits down with a briefcase next to him
right next to her and he opens it
and he is dressed in a neat black striped suit
with a wine-red tie

and probably he is also going to Johannesburg
to the literature department
of the university of Johannesburg
that as an entity
like a hungry monster had swallowed up RAU

and the girl and I look at each other for moments
before very cautious we start a conversation
about our jobs, the country's financial state
and when it turns to poetry
the blonde loves Shakespeare's sonnets
especially sonnet 116
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds."
I notice that the professor
is busy reading T. S. Eliot's "Wasteland."

He must have overheard our conversation
when he suddenly says:
"I see that you do also really like Eliot.
I like your poem: "In the grey-land of a wasted world"
and the way, in which you do interpret Eliot,
but then you do probably have a dim worldview
that everything is running to the end."

"I usually write more about reality, "
at which he laughs and says:
" and love and other things."
Again the blonde does catch my eye
with a much bigger smile.

"I did not realise that you are a poet, " she says.
"I do experiment with poetry, " I do admit
"Says the man that have written thousands of poems, "
the professor remarks and wants to know
about my views on life.

"Probably André Maurois had it right
when he said that the two worst inventions of man
was gunpowder and romantic love."

The professor is silent and the blonde is now big-eyed
when she asks:"Why do you say a thing like that,
how can anybody think like that? "

"Both do have the ability to cause things
that does hurt like hell…"

[Reference:"We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - gunpowder
and romantic love."André Maurois. RAU:The Rand Afrikaans University.]

© Gert Strydom