The Guitar Player Poem by Gert Strydom

He is just a child, a guitar player
and he hits the strings of his brown guitar quickly
in a lonely kind of song,
as if he is going into the world with it.
He plays for whoever is passing, for the night
where the birds and crickets are suddenly silent
when he picks at strings with a deep sweet kind of hurt
and his hurting music cuts through all things.
Sometimes he feels the cold, the winter wind
that wants to bring him back to reality
and he is being devoured by life
where the stars shine high above him
and he searches through pockets for a marijuana cigarette,
as the last pleasure that is left to him.

[Reference: Die speelman (The playing-man) by N.P. van Wyk Louw.]