Gert Strydom Poems

I listen to and watch a young man
on a scouting reconnaissance mission
on the frontline in the Ukraine,
where they are only two soldiers
...

(after Piet van Rooyen)

My doll, my loveliest thing,
I cannot get my messages to you without electricity,
...

(in answer to Breyten Breytenbach)

Pain is something that exist as a part of feeling,
it's an utter kind of thing between good and bad:
...

{after Uys Krige)

So easily her words did enchant me,
made me in love with how se does the world see.
...

For I know what plans that I have for you,
"declares the LORD, "plans for well-being,
and not for calamity, in order to give you
a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29: 11.
...

(after Christopher Marlowe, in answer to Sir Walter Raleigh)

I remember the days we were young
and your sweet name were on my tongue,
...

"The Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire
out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold,
the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed.
"...And He said, Draw not night hither: put off thy shoes
...

I hear the evening calling you,
the wind rustles flowers on the porch
while the moon hangs yellow with a big eye
and I am aching from longing for you
...

"You must realise, however, that in the last days
difficult times will come. People will be lovers
of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant,
abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful,
...

You are my ally, the woman I want as a wife,
the one who brings fulfillment to my life
the one with who I want to awake in the dawn,
who is constant in a world full of strive,
...