Gert Strydom, 6 june 2014
(after Breyten Breytenbach)
When the sun sets I wait upon my sweetheart
after office hours
to drive into the yard
from the gym
with the eyes of her car
cutting with searchlights around the corner.
I do embrace and kiss her
when she gets out of the car
while the stars gleam high up in the sky
and I am infatuated by my beloved.
I bring a hand full of flowers
of which the fragrances hang glorious around us
to my love
while the big old yellow moon
scrutinize us from the heaven.
[Reference: “herfsaand” (Autumn Evening) by Breyten Breytenbach]
Gert Strydom, 6 june 2014
To you my unborn child
I will learn the songs
and read the poems
that tells about the honour of this nation,
I will teach you a national anthem that is trampled,
songs of praise to the omnipotent God
and tell about a people over whom God holds His hand
and if later you want to emigrate
to another land
and live under another flag
and have an antipathy to being an Afrikaner
then you will by your Afrikaner ethos know
about people that had been true
to their country and to God
and there will be no renunciation in you.
Gert Strydom, 5 june 2014
What does it help to ask
every priest, pastor, elder and deacon
to pray to God,
when God hears the prayer
of anyone that comes to Him?
Or do people think
that God is blind and deaf
or do demand one or other gesture
or act
before He does hear?
Gert Strydom, 5 june 2014
(from Abelard to Heloise)
I can never forget
your words of love, my darling
and those words
do stay constantly with me
and sometimes I dream that you are in my arms,
that you lay spooned against me
but all that I now have got left of you
are your precious letters
and although I am lonely,
sometimes feel extradited
It’s your love
that carries me through the lonely nights
and there is nothing more that I ask from life
than to see you again.
Gert Strydom, 4 june 2014
The sun hangs red like a ball
and the high shooting tower skeleton
against the setting sun
and in the distance
there are the flames of Impala warplanes
where they take off
one after another into the night
and later there are a few puma helicopters
that land chattering
and the seven sisters and the southern cross
shine brightly above me
and I wonder
what God thinks about man and his wars
while a red beacon winks
on and off at the tower.
Gert Strydom, 4 june 2014
There are times that destiny does want to devour me
where I am extradited against the stormy wind
and if you in a time like that keep near to me
I am blinded like a child
and know that love goes much further
and are deeper than a person can understand.
Gert Strydom, 4 june 2014
(After Dylan Thomas)
He saw her standing on the pier
watching his boat coming in
a long-legged girl
with her hair twirled
in a French plait
and seaward the brewing gale
was closing in with a black sky
and lightning bolts flashing brighter.
The sails billowed in the piercing wind
and he steered clear of some sandbanks
to the harbour mouth
on the surging swell
into the breakwater
and he could almost smell
the coming storm
while he anchored down.
She was still on the jetty
when stepped up on it
and looked stunning
as if walking right out of
a magazine
and she smiled at him
as if she had been waiting.
He was in love with the sea
and had sworn against any woman
keeping him from it
and nobody would stop him
from sailing when he needed to.
“You just made it in time
cutting it very fine,” she said
and her eyes sparkled blue
and her voice was sweet
and he wanted to frown
but her smile went to his heart
and he asked what she was doing there
and she replied that she loves the sea
and wanted to witness the storm coming in
and that was it and she had him
hook line and sinker.
[Reference: “Ballade of the Long-legged bait” by Dylan Thomas.]
Gert Strydom, 3 june 2014
While visiting a friend
who was innocently locked up while awaiting trial,
I saw how unapproachable,
chilly, almost emotionless the law officers
are against detainees and their families.
After the fiasco where ostensibly
I wanted to take a photograph
the action of the men surrounding me
locking their hands like cuffs around my wrists
and putting hands in the back of my pants
to hold on to my belt
even the insults and threats
to assault me right there in public
has shown to me how obsessed with force,
how arrogant and absolutely impudent
policemen have become
as if they do not serve the public.
The thing that bothers me even more
is that like in the Anglo-Boer war
white Afrikaner men in that force
are like joiners, like traitors and to survive
they make a mockery of their own culture
will do almost anything
to creep deeper
into the backsides of their black comrades,
as if they are valueless,
totally without manners,
or respect for the rights of other people,
going into life
like the bad white people
that you meet at times,
when called up for military service,
who share naked photographs
and sexual experiences of their wives.
I read the words of a prophet
who forecasts difficult times
and says that the laager of God
is drawn around the houses of everyone
who stays faithful, who stands with their own people,
but they who are one with the enemy
are awaiting destruction.
[References: “Police intimidation” by Gert Strydom. Visionary Nicolaas van Rensburg.]
Gert Strydom, 3 june 2014
My Lord, there are times when I am searching for answers,
are searching to where deliverance lies
and sometimes situations just feel too much
but continually I do find Your answers
on time and unexpectedly.
Gert Strydom, 3 june 2014
When the darkness comes between us
bringing overwhelming separation
and jumping with death
between our lives
so that our love is torn apart
will we then still know of love
or will everything between us
be just a empty nothing
as if further there is no meaning?
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