Gert Strydom Poems

The government is messing with the lives of people,
the South African government mess South Africans around,
with great numbers of the dead it will be later a real mess
and with double standards people come right up to an abyss.
...

My God, You are aware of everything around me,
do know that world-wide with a virus there is calamity,
as a sinful man I stand before You perplexed
where all humanity is by this deadly thing vexed,
...

(for Daleen, after Rita Mouton)

Like every other afternoon the thunder roars,
I notice blue-white flashes coming down closer and closer,
...

1 In the High-Veldt (Fatima stanza sonnet)

Then the fourteen-day rain sieved down,
by the wind broken branches were left behind
...

Bit by bit you give me your heart
and the days come full of love and sorrow,
where constantly I do long for you,
while for many days we do live separate.
...

In the lock-down living in the same town
deep in memory I am lost in you glance,
while outside the thunder and rain comes down.
Its strange how little things do your face enhance,
...

At Ballito the sun burns ultraviolet,
pierce through the ocean's navy-blue,
where I have a picture of your body
and do remember that summer so very clearly.
...

No one could a time just as this one foresee
where during a lock-down I would miss you so,
are by government restricted to you to go,
where from this virus there is nowhere to flee
...

On 22 May 2019 two black men with rifles in their hands
jumped over the bladed-wire fence and entered the property.
When I confronted them at the front door they were impudent and insolent
and I saw some more men and on a brain wave slammed the door shut,
...

Look my love; I send to you the red sun,
that looks red-eyed in the morning and late afternoon
and brightly over your skin bake down intimately,
that you do day upon day see wherever you are.
...