Two Cuts

My English pleas:

dead butterflies on an Afrikaans desk.

Van Der Walt gestured for me to select a cane.

Or should we make it three? 

His dastardly crew of hitmen, 

clipped into a glass-doored cabinet:

mean and thin through to thuggish and thick.

Spoiled for choice, hey? 

These men are gone;

their accurate arms and supple wrists-

dust, bones, ash.

Swish! Swish!

Their canes are just sticks,

preserved by lacquer 

and a sadist’s dead love. 

Don’t let me see you here again!