Gert Strydom Poems

When the Enola Gay on command
dropped her deadly bomb
unleashing moments of hell in Hiroshima
and a nuclear blast went off in destruction
...

I saw young men, boys just out of school,
working men with university degrees
far too clever to be any anyone’s fool
...

While your cigarette spirals into the air
you breasts against me
talk in an own language
making impressions with their form and fashion
...

Farms are burned down to the ground
and cattle slaughter just there in the fields,
while a super power forces women and children
into concentration camps to kill them there.
...

Introduction

In the kaki coloured tent in Umbilo he writes
his life’s story while women, children and babies are dying,
...

I. I did not expect this early spring

I did not expect that after this severe winter
that destroyed flowers, grass and plants
...

In the morning we are awakening
to the rising sun as a shining thing,
during the year seasons come and they go;
while the real depths of love we do not know.
...

When the breeze on the sea and land is strong
do not feel sorrow when I am gone
as if I am the only man, the only one
and when my ashes are spreading among
...

Now it is winter when trees are skeleton,
stripped bare and have no more leaves
as if they are lifeless
and the weather is grey as if
...

Motorcycling along
the N1 freeway
from Pretoria in the north to Cape Town
...