Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 6 june 2014

Autumn Evening

(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]


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 6 june 2014

To you my unborn child

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.


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 5 june 2014

What does it help?

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?


number of comments: 1 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 5 june 2014

To see you again

(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.


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 4 june 2014

The sun hangs red like a ball

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.


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 4 june 2014

There are times that destiny does want to devour me

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.


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 4 june 2014

The long-legged bait

(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.]


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 3 june 2014

Things bothering me about South African policemen

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.]


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 3 june 2014

My Lord, there are times

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.


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom, 3 june 2014

When the darkness comes between us

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?


number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail


  10 - 30 - 100  



Other poems: For now and for always, The temptation of being near to her, Your walking away is measured in watt, In the garden (ABECEDARIUM), Just for a moment it is there, There are people, Unknowing we may be living in a war zone, Holiday, I yearn for the secrets of nature (sonnet), At 52 the nuts of my country are stripped, A strange dream (triolet), The beach, the morning, Where star systems do disappear in the nought (sonnet), Come to my flower garden, Warriors of the civil service, This morning the sky glitters blue, You must not show any fear, My dear loving God, Sad tidings, Morning, Mirror image, The sun hangs orange red, Divorce V, Divorce IV (Espinela), Divorce III, Divorce II (cavatina), Divorce, Respite, At times we are only set on passing (American sonnet), The peach tree, The gardener, The old guitar (cavatina), Dear Lord God, Still life, Two sides to everything (cavatina), I have missed my country, The sardine run, He lies stretched out in the sun, Africa, There’s no other country, When death’s fingers do me touch, I wonder where is an untouched place that firmly does stand, You never came, I am afraid, The silent countdown, Without matter, Dare you character?, Once I wrote a kind of happy song (Orléans rondel prime), There is no other saviour, Alone we come into the world (for my mom on mother’s day), With hunger in your eyes, Please do forgive, Hoba West Meteor, When I do consider how my time is spent, I see him doing carpentry, When the two of us met, John Phillip, On Pretoria (Italian sonnet), Return, Cecil John Rhodes (Italian sonnet) (in answer to Rudyard Kipling), Afterwards, I walk in the veldt near to Majuba hillock, Vain are the words and deeds that are mine (Rubiyat sonnet), When I do find no place of peace (sonnet), Why I remember the Anglo-Boer war (John Dee sonnet), Lord, only in Your footsteps (Persian / Rubiyat quatrain), On a night, Far too quickly time rushes on (Persian /Rubiyat quatrain), Like any other person, She lives beautiful (sonnet), Where this world is but a grain of sand, On the day of my birth, The crucifixion of the Son of God, Today my heart is full of joy, A prayer (Sonnet), On my birthday, My heart has gone quite in me (Persian / Rubiyat quatrain), Come to me, Soldier: yesterday, At this place I have been before (sonnet), There had been a kind of loneliness, When the early the morning does begin (cavatina), Constantly I am astonished, When I hold you tight, Life is a gift, Bus trip at night, I have not seen the spark of life, Kamikaze, Lucifer at sunrise, The things in a town, When from me she is out of sight, How chilly like winter, Some times, I love you, Long Beach, As my eyes gaze into the dark night, I see her dancing gaily, Right against the morass, African September, A room in the past, The secret room, It had been a hell of spring with the sun hanging scorching, The marsh, For my darling, with New Year, The old year, Today people are not interested, South Africa is also my country, In this distant country, What fanciful lives we lead, As if they are beacons, You are my darling (sonnet), On Christmas, Last night I dreamt of you, Where are we now?, I had dreamt of you, At night the mind plays its tricks, Inside you and I dance, One Military Hospital, Something about a bird in a tree, While the year hangs skeleton, I gave my love to you, No other painting, Field of maize, The red arum lilies, Would my words, When the front door, At dusk, Child, Cry, Maybe 4, Maybe 3, Maybe 2, To be us, Photocopy machine, I do love Africa, While everything is turning brown outside, The crumbling man, My small Jack Russell dog, With self contempt I stand in the veldt, The fallen Cuban soldier, There is a time when night sneaks in, After the farm invasions in Zimbabwe, The small redbreast sings and dances, I love you, Walls, A child is a strange thing, Baby lies so fast asleep, It is a pitch-dark night, Hecuba, A pastor,

Terms of use | Privacy policy | Contact

Copyright © 2010 truml.com, by using this service you accept terms of use.


contact with us






Report this item

You have to be logged in to use this feature. please register

Ta strona używa plików cookie w celu usprawnienia i ułatwienia dostępu do serwisu oraz prowadzenia danych statystycznych. Dalsze korzystanie z tej witryny oznacza akceptację tego stanu rzeczy.    Polityka Prywatności   
ROZUMIEM
1