How I Long Again For A Time Poem by Gert Strydom

How I long again for a time
where people can leave doors unlocked, windows open,
where children can play innocently in the park,
where you can stroke carefree through the hair of your wife.

Where you can see her cook jam
from the yellow peach tree,
can smell the fresh bread that she is baking,
can see her smile satisfied with life,

where you can day after day know
that to be living is a wonderful thing,
when in the evening’s candle glow
she looks big-eyed romantically at you

but it’s in a different world that we are living,
where black criminals fire shots
burst into houses, torture, rape and murder people
and somehow everything has started to go wrong

while hatred becomes a reality,
with darkness spreading further and further.