The Game Poem by Gert Strydom

When more enemy pawns break through,
do plant landmines and do murder people on farms
horseman, motorbikes are let loose in the veldt
to with speed jump inclined in advance

when the search in hot pursuit operations
does circle out wider to make everything safe,
while airborne soldiers do jump above a enemy base
to quench the attacks, when pawns do take two steps

the general sit safe as a queen
far away in the rearguard
when enemy castles do advance and it's check
when things get dangerous with battle-tanks,

when two fighter jets and a bomber
oblique with cannons and bombs do draw lines,
like bishops singing godly songs
while at the back of that base
there are Puma helicopters landing.

In armour black-townships are patrolled,
arias are divided left and right
in block upon block of houses
to avoid that mere pawns do die,
are surrounded in flames do receive necklaces.

The world looks at the board with blocks
when the Red Bear in black moves its towers,
in white from the South armour do fight back,
when the castles of the Bear fall in hordes,

three own battle-tank-castles
and eleven armoured-cars are cornered,
do receive deadly shots in a landmine field,
just more than thirty of our own pawns do die
while the Bear does loose
near to five thousand of its soldiers,

castles near to a hundred, hundreds of combat vehicles
where the Bear does acknowledge that its struggle is lost,
and the world wants to believe that the war is over
when the king does topple, does fall from his own accord.