This Afternoon Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Herman de Coninck)

This afternoon people did bump me off a train,
and on the concrete platform I fell under the wheels of a train
but when Gwenevieve does awake everything is still well
and then unexpectedly I get a heart attack
where my blood pressure is so high as if there are no bounds to it
but where that three-year-old grandchild expected the worst
she finds me alive when I visit them at night
and the joy that radiates from her
lifts me up and give me new power,
as if I do promise to never die
but even in this every human being has an inability.

[Reference:"Opluchting" (Lifting up)by Herman de Coninck.]

© Gert Strydom