Retrenchment Poem by Gert Strydom

How frail now every day unfurls
in my own little paradise:
the house full of people
keeping me company,
sometimes arguing over
non-essential things,

the garden with weeds
that appears after the first rain,
where in this early spring
almost everything is flowering,

the cats and dogs
in a welcoming committee
when I motorbike in
returning from job hunting
and publishing poems

and verses from other poets that I read,
the ones I that write
are overflowing
while I try to keep my sanity
in this world, this society gone nuts, gone mad.