In Springs Poem by Gert Strydom

Sometimes they walk around in parking areas,
with old hard beards, blue and sometimes days old,
usually they smell of smoke, leaves and ground
some of them do beg for their survival
with eyes, heads stiff, sometimes here and there
a weak dirty joke or still a half smile
but their eyes are without courage, sombre
they are jobless from laws of government,

at the mine, at places pushed from work,
very willing to do any kind of thing
with some stories that they tell each other,
not at all reconciled with their new lives
and most of them are a little older
not elderly, but stripped from self-esteem.