I Sit In A Bar In Sixth Street (A Reply To W.H. Auden.) Poem by Gert Strydom

I sit in a bar in Sixth Street,
with some flashing lights at the slot machines,
people playing at the pool tables,
the bar man smiling at someone’s joke
and bringing another cold Hunters Gold
and I am neither afraid nor uncertain
nor doubt what my future is going to be
and the world has changed in this decade

men guilty of crimes are in the highest positions,
for some people a political party
has become a religion,
people from all over Africa
are streaming in, are killing whites
with more than three thousand farmers dead
and I have no fear but trust in God instead

and no scholarship nor a study
from Luther till whenever
is needed to know
why the government is oppressing
white Afrikaner men, are acting
against human rights,
are reserving job opportunities, economic wealth

l’Envoi
and even if the bewitching stays
like one last final curse
of evil received creating evil in return
and the innocents who received punishment
become the monsters of tomorrow,
even if a psychopathic god is in place
still destiny, the will of the creator God
holds the future, raises leaders and nations,
brings them to a fall.

[Reference: September 1,1939 by W.H. Auden.]