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poetry

Gert Strydom, 23 july 2014

With a glance on Cuito Cuanavale

Through the dense wilderness
where the red earth swallows everything
Ratel armoured cars burst through the bush
from Rundu to where
the Cuzizi and Lomba rivers cross
while scouts reconnoitre the enemy
and it unleashes a battle that lasts for days
that crushes and burns thousands of enemy soldiers
and everywhere around us there is danger,
there are enemies fighting and others deserting and running away
where we press them in between the two rivers
to where we make a death acre

while the enemy shoot with their battle tanks and armour,
Mig-warplanes every now and then drop their bombs,
South Africans pull the heart out of FAPLA,
out of the Cubans and the Russians
and the shadow of the South African soldier falls
over Africa and far away hangs
over Cuba and Russia
and mothers and wives in Angola and Cuba cover their faces
while they long for their husbands and boys
and suddenly the communists start to talk about peace,
politicians as if in rapture
make accords and do tolerate each other
as if we are brothers in the universe
and the world that had been disappears into the nought.

[References: “The battle at Cuito Cuanavale: “The results of the campaign up to April 1988 were 4,785 killed on the Cuban/Faplan side, with 94 tanks and hundreds of combat vehicles destroyed, against 31 South Africans killed in action, 3 tanks destroyed (SADF tanks entered the war after the Lomba River campaign) and 11 SADF armoured cars and troop carriers lost. A total of 9 Migs were destroyed and only 1 SAAF Mirage shot down.” (General) Jannie Geldenhuys. (1994): At the front. Jonathan Ball Publishers. P240.

“The South African force, under the command of Colonel Deon Ferreira, was tasked with carrying out three operations (1) Operation Modular - The aim of which was to halt and reverse the FAPLA / Cuban advance on the UNITA strongholds of Mavinga and Jamba, (2) Operation Hooper - The aim of which was to inflict maximum casualties on the retreating FAPLA / Cuban forces after they had been halted and (3) Operation Packer - The aim of which was to force the FAPLA / Cuban forces to retreat to the west of the Cuito River.” Nortje, Piet (2003). 32 Battalion. Zebra Press.

"In early October the Soviet-Fapla offensive was smashed at the Lomba River near Mavinga. It turned into a headlong retreat over the 120 miles back to the primary launching point at Cuito Cuanavale. In some of the bloodiest battles of the entire civil war, a combined force of some 8,000 UNITA fighters and 4,000 SADF troops destroyed one Fapla brigade and mauled several others out of a total Fapla force of some 18,000 engaged in the three-pronged offensive. Estimates of Fapla losses ranged upward of 4,000 killed and wounded. This offensive had been a Soviet conception from start to finish. Senior Soviet officers played a central role in its execution. ... Huge quantities of Soviet equipment were destroyed or fell into UNITA and SADF hands when Fapla broke into a disorganized retreat... The 1987 military campaign represented a stunning humiliation for the Soviet Union, its arms and its strategy. ... As of mid-November, the UNITA/SADF force had destroyed the Cuito Cuanavale airfield and pinned down thousands of FAPLA's best remaining units clinging onto the town's defensive perimeters." Crocker, Chester A. (1992) High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighbourhood. (Crocker was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the Reagan Administration.)

John Turner claims that: “following their losses, the Cubans were convinced that further military confrontation with the SADF would not succeed.” Turner, John W. (1998). Continent Ablaze; The Insurgency Wars in Africa, 1960 to the Present. Cassell Plc.

Comments made by a Soviet adviser to the Cubans in Angola: "The people's armed forces for the liberation of Angola have not been able either, even with the help of the Cubans, to decisively defeat the enemy and drive him out of the territory or the country.” M. Ponomariov, Krasnaya Zvezda Magazine; 20 May 1988.]

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Gert Strydom, 23 july 2014

Inferno

(in answer to N.P. van Wyk Louw)

I have heard an urgent message
that with the coming of the great creator God
planets will loose their light,
even in the outer universe that lays far off
and on the power of the omnipotent command
all of the stars will loose their light,
that love will exist to eternity
when God comes to lead his people,
that a sea of flame will cover this planet
and will come from the omnipotent Lord,
that all under the power of darkness
will admit that He is righteous and honourable,
that the universe will know of the judgement of the almighty God
and that a great crowd of people will gather with Him.

[Reference: “Inferno” by N.P. van Wyk Louw.]

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Gert Strydom, 23 july 2014

Evening conversation

Never has a peaceful silence been between us,
intimate body language
has never said so many things
with the beautiful curve
of your breasts surging
while the night stretches into darkness,
with your two eyes shining like burning objects
and do anew create new desires in me
and it feels as if this time can last eternally,
as if everything just did come
to this moment, this single hour
as the peak of existence, the peak between life and death
while in passion are catching a mere moment
to which your moans and cries does hang.

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Satish Verma, 23 july 2014

OF TIME AND CHAINS

A quest for celestial insanity
brings some comfort.
Somewhere the script had failed.

Only man was not responsible
for the exiled sun.
No longer the earth obeys the numbers.

Wait, my mother
I will enter into your bones
and increase the serotonin flow.

A father killed his daughter
for the sake of a dragonfly.
Downstairs moon was sleep-walking.

A constant dialogue
between flesh and a tyrant
was satisfying the sadistic god.

Satish Verma

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Naeem, 22 july 2014

Man under the Tree

Oh, brother of mine, I have seen you under the tree;
-you have tried so fine to become what could not be.

You have thrived away from the shadows so supreme;
-you had that you lay and come to what you may have seen.

You let others fly beneath the waves of your dreams;
-but you may forget what may lie and you have foreseen.

Pity me not regretful brother of mine under the tree;
-you have never tried harder for what you could have been.

-Nr.

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Azhar alam, 22 july 2014

Inteqam

Abae talkh ki nisbat mujhe bekraar kiya hai
Is hararat me jaam nafsh nisar kiya hai
Arzmand bhi tha mai par nazarah kuchh ajeeb hua
Ye manzar usne kayam saro bazaar kiya hai
Kya pata tha badle ki aag sulag uthegi aaj
Usne bade mijaz se ye waar kiya hai
Zehan me aabad hai beete fasane aaj bhi
Ajeeb waqt ki fitrat ne ye qarar kiya hai
Maine dakhal diya tha kisi zamane ke azhar
Aur aaj usne paimana aar paar kiya hai

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Gert Strydom, 22 july 2014

In the middle of the week you did come to me

In the middle of the week you did come to me
the sheen of your hair, your glowing eyes
sparkled like a sudden bolt of thunder
and for moments I was speechless.
You did astonish me with your beauty
and suddenly you jumped into my heart,
caught me unaware like a spectre
in the early years of old age,
you were suddenly in my arms,
volcanoes of a life lived wanted to burst out
and my heart did not want to calm down
in joyful amuck I was happy
and suddenly my life was new and fresh
and all of my sorrows were gone.

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Gert Strydom, 22 july 2014

How many times

How many times
I have looked at the stars
as if they can lead me
straight to You,

as if with their help
I could find my way
and still untouchable
they hang above me

but Your name stays on my lips
as if the power of it
can catch everything around me
and to You my life is bound.

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Satish Verma, 22 july 2014

JUXTAPOSED

Give me a piece of your body
before you go.
A tooth, a nail, a curled hair.
A relic, my sadness wants to keep.

By your absence I will live
in the bones of tangled bodies,
who were shot down on their tracks
under the sun, eyes apart.

The trembling does not stop.
Bread loaves were lying uneaten.
Wailing rises, reaching a crescendo.
Blood splattered soil, my hands collect

for god, to show a dirty game,
when I meet him as a witness.
Wanting to know, why not the right to live
was the most sacred thing?

Satish Verma

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Anthony DiMichele, 21 july 2014

namaste

I bow to the spirit in you
with a lower case pronoun
the first person singular
agenda
dissolves
into everything
a plurality
ironically a unity
bonding us in our chaos
without both of us in each other’s way
*

don’t be negative
when your head
is buried
in the
sand
you are already one
dying
to be two
and so on
through
the entertainments
the fears
the day dreams
that can sometimes
remember
the sky inside you
*

we pick at our defects
as with scabs
always in a hurry to heal
to accelerate its natural pace
to be perfect
again
and be able to smile
with our original face
*

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Latest items:

poetry

With a glance on Cuito Cuanavale

Inferno

Evening conversation

OF TIME AND CHAINS

Man under the Tree

Inteqam

In the middle of the week you did come to me

How many times

JUXTAPOSED

namaste

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