Military Call-Up Poem by Gert Strydom

In a region where thunder falls in the summer
the city lays stretched out when the first sounds of war resound,
when boys are called to be soldiers for their own country
to protect their borders from danger when the first shots are fired.

The infallible remote control unravels a falling of feet
of eighteen year old boy upon eighteen year old boy.
In a region where thunder falls in the summer
the city lays stretched out when the first sounds of war resound,

with military police on patrol to avert decline
where in front of garden gates, on veranda steps they lean smoking,
catch drunken soldiers in bars and kick them that they groan
somewhere in the back corner of the universe
in a region where thunder falls in the summer