Everything Between Us Is Black Poem by Gert Strydom

Everything Between Us Is Black



A black sleep near to death
surrounds me and everything between you and me,
while police patrol cars
with flashing lights and sirens
are parking outside the yard
and you are at your lover’s house.

They are here to lock handcuffs around my wrists,
send by the lies that you trumpet forth
and when I only allow one policeman
to come into the yard
while your white policeman lover with the others
have to wait outside the yard
the lot of them are raging mad
as I threaten
to take legal action against them

and that one black policeman
finds your drugged out child
where he is sleeping,
learn from him
that they have come in vain
and that you are making arses of them and me,
he searches through the house
and I send the whole lot of them to hell
where they can go and crawl back in

and there’s death
like a deep dark grave,
where at a time
I had love for you

and my memory fades, about our gloomy story
of which now nothing remains
but for the realization
that your departure was my actual salvation
and between us everything is black,
all meaning has been wiped out eternally.

[Reference: Un grand sommeil noir… by Paul Verlaine.]

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Gert Strydom

Gert Strydom

Johannesburg, South Africa
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