Memory To Eugène Terreblancé At Rooigrond Prison Poem by Gert Strydom

This government slammed a jail door behind you,
caged you in like a animal, locked you behind bars
in the prison at Rooigrond;
when this government took your freedom
a potted plant was your biggest treasure
and the grace that you found on your knees
from the almighty Lord God

and between the prisoners with tin plates,
who were continuously making a ruckus,
they tried to devour your humanity.

In the mornings they gave you porridge,
before prison doors slammed behind you,
in the afternoons again porridge and for dinner pale soup;
but still you are walking through my thoughts,

your splendid poems turn and whirl in my mind
as if they are still keeping you alive
and this government
does not hear the cock crowing three times,
the Son of God was also betrayed and sold.

The barbarians that slaughtered you with pangas
already got bail,
(the one as a child is free from prosecution)
and in a few days your killers
(from Mozambique who brought disorder here)
will probably walk free as heroes into the streets.

By some of your own people despised
you were actually right, your own blood that flowed;
on the hands of black people,
stays proof of it eternally

l’Envoi
and somehow the blacks in our country
has totally lost their senses,
where they rob and decimate
the Afrikaner people and Afrikaner farmers.

[Reference: Rooigrondtronk (Rooigrond prison) by Eugène Terreblancé.]