The New Pretoria Poem by Gert Strydom

Why does this city with its Jacaranda trees
seem so much like the one
surrounded by mine dumps?

Its lines usually square lie broken
filled with tall towers gleaming
in the early morning summer sun.

Sunnyside once peaceful
resembles Hillbrow, with poor homeless people
and Nigerian criminals walking the streets

and at a park I pause
to sit on a bench under the shade of a tree
and minibus taxis drive past hooting

the sidewalk is full of people
talking at the top of their voices
and unstoppable the crumbling, deterioration

the fading into third world surrounds me
and at a tree not ten metres away
a black man pulls his pants down

to relieve himself and whistles during the act
and the sweet scent of the flowering Jacarandas,
is suddenly gone

and the air is filled with the stench of urine
and excrement and zipping his pants
the man asks me for a cigarette.