Classic Poem

After long weary days
Of crucifying Drought,
Bright rain will come again
To heal the stricken earth.
As rest to way-worn feet,
As sleep to tired eyes,
Soft rain will drop once more
Upon the blistered earth.
The veld again will bloom
With bud and blade and flower,
The ravaged earth rejoice
Forgetful of past woe.

Freed from the bonds of Drought,
By shining hosts of rain,
The veld once more will bloom
Into a paradise:
But to the waste of life,
Bound by the spirit's drought,
Shall freedom come again
Like flashing rain from heaven?
Shall fountains spring once more
Out of the choking sand?
And shall the waste of life
Put forth a startled flower?

Upon a solitary farm,
Tucked away unobtrusively
In a tiny crinkle of the vast veld,
Dwells the tenant-farmer, Piet Bloem.
Piet's home is a three-roomed cottage,
A rough habitation of unburnt brick
Roofed with corrugated iron.
Piet possesses a small herd
Of companionable cattle—
Cows, calves, tollies, heifers and oxen—
Which he cherishes with the love of a mother.

Dwelling quietly on his lonely farm
Piet has caught at whiles sudden gleams,
Lovely as a crumbling rainbow,
Flashes from the elusive wings
Of the kingfisher, happiness:
And beside the door of his dismal cottage,
He has noticed, absent-mindedly,
The slow, shy budding
Of the coy flower, contentment.

Iron Drought is now upon the land,
The bird of happiness has flown;
The flower of contentment is dead:
And Piet is despondent.
Daily he searches the skies,
The stark, pitiless skies,
For the flutter of a white-winged hope
In their blue, burning expanses;
Daily he watches and waits in vain;
Daily he sees his work wasted,
Sees his shining fields of mealies
Burnt up by the torrid sun;
Shrivelled, too, is the grass,
And the distressed cattle
Huddle dejectedly around the homestead,
Sick with hunger.

Grimly Piet toils from dawn to dark,
Chopping branches from all trees
That have the slightest flutter
Of green leaves upon them;
Slicing prickly-pear and aloes
For his famished cattle;
Carrying water from the bore-hole
For those too weak to rise.
But his labours are vain,
The foodstuffs are exhausted;
The bore-hole dries up:
Huddled around the homestead
The cattle lie—too spent to stand:
They follow Piet with patient eyes,
Inquiring and suffering eyes.
Piet—the only God they know—
Can no longer aid them
And puzzled they die—despairing they die.

Feverishly Piet wanders in the veld,
As restless as unkennelled winds
That rustle night-long
Through coverts of silence,
Restless and distraught he roams
Under the blanched face of the moon:
Now he stumbles up a rugged koppie,
Wildly surmising that he sees his cattle—
Ghostly beeves browsing upon stones.
Bewildered he staggers homeward,
And after weary tossing
Sinks suddenly into the sea of sleep.
Sleeping he dreams:
Dreams that the long-delaying rain
Is sweeping and swirling over the veld,
And thudding softly upon the roof:
He awakes, sits up, and listening,
Hears only the dreary night-wind
Soughing dolefully amongst
The stripped, listless trees.

Helpless and heart-broken
Piet nails to his cottage-door
A message of despair:
‘God has forsaken us.’
Then, with his wife and young children,
He trudges to the nearest dorp,
And joins the legion
Of defeated, dispirited poor-whites—
Sands of an encroaching desert
Sullenly stifling the land.