Gert Strydom Poems

Tired of crawling along in congested traffic in my car
on any one of the two the Pretoria-Johannesburg freeways
or having to take the old road
today I experiment by taking the Gautrain
...

(after Ted Koorser, after Carl-Pierre Naudé)

He was larger than life says the glance
in the old portrait that still hangs on a top-floor wall,
...

(for Annelize, after Dorothy Parker)

This is what I swear to you:
that eternally I want to view you
...

There are blue-gum trees that rise
where now just some of the stones are left,
next to a big old burned down house
and I am gripped by the sad story,
...

As a soldier with a Bushman tracker
and a section of other soldiers
hot on the trail of terrorists
I learned how deadly and avenging
...

Seeing Soviet flagged battle ships,
some submarines surfaced
etched against a enemy harbour,
while on a sabotage mission
...

At dawn the veldt emerges filled with thorny bushes
covered with fog creeping in from the river
being burnt away by the white-hot sun
smouldering through the red-brown dust
...

I did hear the staccato sound
of a machinegun barking,
in the distance saw wind-devils turning
and saw antelope jumping up and coming down
...

(for Annelize)

As a young man just out of the army
I was smitten with you and lost in you,
...

(in answer to Ernst van Heerden)

When at night the calendar
does turn to the next day
...