Gert Strydom Poems

The sounds of cars, trucks, trains disappear
when the night comes dark and suddenly the moon shines.
Somewhere outside a dove calls to its mate
and amber lights wink one after the other
...

Remind me about how it once was
when we were newly in love,
about how neatly our lives fitted into each other’s
before the time when the hurting did begin.
...

In the old painting something was living
displaying dead men in eternal youth,
it had some deeply hidden kind of truth,
about the evanescence of everything,
...

Bright light shine in, not much is going on,
I open an old door that behind me thud
when I am sure that all people are gone,
my eyes catch a single red rose bud
...

There’s no thunder’s match falling from the sky
while for days without end rain sieves down,
while we both live in a world of our own
and the cold, wet winter passes us by,
...

as she did shake out the stars
to make them cover the whole heaven
and everywhere they were blue and white.

No star did lead any wise men
...

The moment when the sun disappeared on its way
into the blue ocean,
when somewhat early the bells tolled for the hour of prayer
and he had smeared the last putty onto the window
...

(after William Butler Yeats)

So beautiful she was, so enraptured and intense
that although my life was miserable
...

Your icy fingers
try to creep in to the room
through the French windows
and I hear your voice cry
...

Like a castle on a rock in the bay
sheltered against sea, wind and spray
under a brazen sun falling like fire
from the sky
...