The Marketplace Poem by Gert Strydom

Daily we live in the marketplace of the world
where almost everything is for sale
and there we do find
things for our daily well-being,
the food we eat,
the clothes we wear,
the houses wherein we do dwell,
the jobs that we do labour at,
places where we do keep fit,
people that help to keep us healthy,
education and our knowledge of things
that does exist,
religion and the way that we do understand God
and in the cinemas and on television
a kind of tinned-in quick-fix comfort
for the soul.

Even the bodies of people,
weapons of war,
war itself
and politics
and at times even the lives
of men as soldiers
are traded
in the world where we do live

but I do recall a time
where the omnipotent God
did dwell among men as a man,
did lash out with His tongue and a whip
and did trade His very life
for the lives of everyone
to pay the wages of sin.