I Have Escaped From This Cruel Real World Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Ingrid Jonker)

I have escaped from this cruel real world
and is now back at Sedaven

where in the stream I play with the water beetles
while the Lord God do share the wild fruit of the veldt with me.

I am at the bee that flies from flower to flower
where red and white proteas on sugar bushes do fill the hillocks.

I am at the guinea fowl that screams like a creaking wheelbarrow in the veldt,
at the peach and apricot trees where the green shiny starling

hungry do eat the flowers off
and already know about the coming fruit

but terribly dishevelled by a wild wind
I walk there as a child

that does find the omnipotence of the Lord God
in all beautiful natural things.

[Reference:"Ontvlugting" (Escape)by Ingrid Jonker.]