Your Golf Playing Postmaster Father Was Your God Poem by Gert Strydom

Your golf playing postmaster father
was your god
(and to you there was no other)
who couldn’t see anything wrong
with the actions of his friends
that wanted to play
sexual games with you
and his wife
who slept around
with whom ever she could.

You sat next to him
at the front door
of the old house in Barberton
with the red polished stairs
while he smoked his pipe
with BB-tobacco
and although you hated smoking
inhaled every vapour
coming from him
as if it would put you
in a godly ordained séance
or maybe a trance.

Each thing that he said,
each thing that he did
to you was holy and right,
even if it lacked justice
and you made a mere man
equal to the Almighty One.

No other man could for you
fit in his shoes
and I tried to live
in a totally different way
and when he died
from a heart attack
on the golf course,

you only saw dread,
for your God was dead
and tried to join him
by taking sleeping pills
and was really angry
for me rushing you to hospital
as if I had got in the way
of your atonement.