The Hell Is Totally Loose (Ballade) Poem by Gert Strydom

(in answer to Charl-Pierre Naudé)

Nothing can save us from the darkness of the heart
that tears and sorrow did chisel in,
by the plundering of a whole society
as the struggle is not anymore between white and black

Chorus:
but gryphons, harpies and demons are loosened as people
and only too easily they deceive everyone,
lie that everything is going better where everything is falling apart
and people wait on the Lord God to come with His salvation

where it seems as the great Day of Judgement is near,
where people with their antics do astound me,
while there is no mercy for those that are unemployed
and demons do disguise themselves in different ways,

where suppression now for decades are flowering,
even black people more than ever do struggle to exist
and the distortion of facts and half-truths even history
old John Phillip (as at Slaughter's Neck)would comprehend

where robbery, rape, murder, torture and killing
is rampant and is at the order of each day,
where through aeons by culture and tradition
people have been taught to plunder as a sign of power,

while people hide behind bladed-wire, palisades and electric fences
with guard dogs that do patrol yard upon yard and women that do cry at night,
when the neighbourhood-watch and armed reaction makes the suburb a war zone
and people do lock in behind steel gates and others trade this country for another,

but history does just repeat itself again
as if nobody do know of it or learn from it
and Blood-river and Golgotha become places that few do understand,
where on our own we cannot face the hellish forces that are rampant

when church denominations fall apart and sell their churches
and no leader, no De Klerk or Mandela can lead as a messiah
as just the Lord God can still bring salvation here
while our country has violence and all kinds of evils and catastrophe.

[Reference: "Die kalksteengroef" (The limestone quarry)by Charl-Pierre Naudé.]

© Gert Strydom