Give My Life Back To Me Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Hetty van Waalwijk)

Give everything back to me:
also the love that is so deep in your heart
where eternally you do remain my wife,
do love me past the trials of destiny.
Give everything back to me:
my dad that had been an Afrikaans teacher,
the days of young-manhood that the army did rob,
my BMW and Jetta that still are stolen
and also my mother's car that I had borrowed,
my ELG twelve bore shotgun, my Colt.45 pistol
now at the warehouse of the registrar of arms,
the pellet air guns that still lie at the police,
(or maybe right there disappeared into the naught)
and also my whole open world
with green maize-fields under the bright blue sky,
my own innocence, my faith and hope
and my accountant-career that lies in pieces,
my name that a church-fellowship are still drawing to tatters,
also the wild sparrows, doves and barbet
that finds friendship with me
and also my Persian ginger-cat with its flat nose,
my Jack Russell that jumps up against me
and everywhere follows me like a child,
my chilli-bushes onto which the chillies did hang like red bells,
my peach-tree that could bare sugar-sweet red-cheeked peaches,
my bushes full of gooseberries,
all of my many books that fill shelve upon shelve,
the clothes that fill wardrobes,
all of the people that had at a time been my friends
and my farther that reads Afrikaans poem after poem,
about "I will stand up, " where a young-man
again does find his own farther back,
where only to the time of my third birthday
I knew my own farther.

[Reference: "Poesje" (Cat)by Hetty van Waalwijk.]

© Gert Strydom