20th Century Poem by Gert Strydom

Farms are burned down to the ground
and cattle slaughter just there in the fields,
while a super power forces women and children
into concentration camps to kill them there.

Railway tracks run crisscross over the country
and galloping horses and oxen pulling wagons
are replaced by roaring cars, lorries
and motorbikes
and people follow technology
as if it’s the new god.

When the stock exchange folds
people jump from the windows of buildings,
while they are out of their wits,
as if they have got wings.

Germans march past
and thousands in crowds
are giving a sigh heil salute

and in a peculiar way stay ignorant
about millions of Jews that are robbed
and killed,
as if they did not exist.

Bombers let bombs dropp like rain
on Britain and rockets
hit London almost unstoppable

and in the icy Russian winter
the Germans are reminded that they are humans
and from Stalingrad they are driven back

until the Russians claim some of Berlin
and half of Germany
as their domain
and almost every women there gets raped

and America drops the bomb on Hiroshima
and another time on Nagasaki
and their enemies are molten, burned and radiated

and after this war jets cross the skies,
rockets go to the moon
where man stands like a god.

l’Envoi
It’s the age were young boys
are shot into peaces in Vietnam, in Namibia
and Angola are sent to war,
where people loose respect for God
and try to solve everything with science,
where man becomes godly in his own eyes

and I wonder what the almighty God
thinks about this
while man is turn the earth to ruins
and are filling the cup
of the wrath of God?