The Blue Hat Man

To,

The Blue Hat Man,

16/c Coronell Street,

Johannesburg.

How virtuefull this life is,

Good days are less lasting,

Odd hours are more continuing.

Sir, to your loneliness

I regret the trespassing done.

Years back in the mid-seventies,

Somewhere along the bull’s street

Try recalling those happy days,

When you lived with a smiling face.

You owned a cottage and named it Woodstock,

That was filled with giggling cries.

A b’ful wife and a pretty girl,

Sedan was what you called her brother.

Your morning tea at the terrace,

And the lake view from the French window.

How you used to point the rainbow,

And the cigar you frequently lit.

In the evening you took a drive,

And the king-of-sirs your royal high.

The silk clothes and the golden tooth,

That twinkled at your lovely smile.

And somewhere in the course of life,

Something strange, something queer did occur.

On one fine drive,

In the busy Dal Street.

You with your honey and the happy kids.

Sedan with Carry on his lap.

You drove the drive way to the hills,

And up the mountains to the cliffs.

As you speeded down the way,

And sedan popped out of the window.

As you called him to get back in,

And that endeavored the bad of all.

You slipped off an aperture,

And the dark valley gulfed the car.

Rolling and trumbling thirty feets,

The next was in a medical hall.

Then and there the four departed,

Sorry, your honey died on the spot

And Carry was never seen,

And you lost your memory tracks.

Sedan was who survived alone,

Without a scratch he watched it all.

Three decades have passed off,

And Sedan is now forty off.

As you live unnamed in this Coronnel Street

With your honey’s blue hat.

The Woodstock now bears a warehouse,

With creeps and cobwebs.

It took years to trace you sir.

How virtuefull this life is,

Good days are lest lasting

Odd hours are more continuing,

Sir to your loneliness,

I regret the trespassing done.

-Sedan.