Poetry

I walk in the veldt near to Majuba hill
where once farmers in battle stood
and the morning wind has a chill to it
where a bullet hit a British general true and good
 
and all that I feel is the lost,
the lost without measure and the severe cost
that British forces made women and children pay
and here at this outpost,
 
not even at the sight of the greatest victory
can I find any peace in me,
even if I fired that selfsame gun
that killed major general George Pomeroy
or drilled a hole right through
1st EarlHoratio Herbert Kitchener
 
it would not take away the killing, the homicide
that the British brought
and the terror, the injustice,
the inhumanity will never be gone.
 
[Poet’s note:  This poem is written in remembrance of the twenty thousand (some figures are as high as thirty five thousand) innocent white Afrikaner women and children that died in British concentration camps, after their farms were scorched by the British in the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa, which includes a great grandmother of mine. For a clear picture of these atrocities read my epic poem “Through the eyes of a field coronet” which is based on the eyewitness account of field coronet JJ Potgieter.]