A Frightening Dream Poem by Gert Strydom

I

With his body halfway in he stumbles
against a slope beneath the earth
like a pig in sewerage, in manure,
accumulated, that is pouring out,
he gasps at the wound where it pours,
draws his mouth shut.

In sorrow a pair stares at him
under a car’s roof -

he passes courteously,
seeing a guard on his rounds.


II

Dams whirl and its daytime,
beyond ditches and borders an imagined thing waits,
he has got to go back, is becoming blinded,
drags himself along, wanting to know
why some people are screaming,
bends down, big and afraid
under an artificial rainbow.

III

With first sight of him hobos mumble where they pass up wind
to where taxi’s are catching people impudently
one can barely breath, is searching for his beloved home,
they are arguing, later almost missing: The night mumbles
a dark cupboard, passing an icy mass
that drifts on a river with the darkness waving,
where Amanda bends in a Viva over another woman
and the wind tears open a pool of water following the fainting sun,
that dies like a dead candle.