You Talk About Flowers In Adderley Street Poem by Gert Strydom

(in answer to I.D. du Plessis)

You talk about flowers in Adderley Street
but my eye catches the sugar bushes and aloes against the ridge
and the rough rocks are covered with wild plums,
porkwood and medlar trees
and I can smell the sugar-sweet fragrance of the flowers
that hangs on the evening breeze

and when the thunderstorm flame up behind the hillocks,
thunder flash upon thunder flash
is burnt into my inner eye
and I smell the odour of electric fire
and of the drops of rain
that pours down upon the red ground

and my friend,
here away from the turmoil of the big city
a man can still become humble
before the omnipotent Creator.

[Reference: "Blomme in Adderleystraat" (Flowers in Adderley street) by I.D. du Plessis.]