I Once Worked With A Beautiful Girl Poem by Gert Strydom

I once worked with a beautiful girl,
whose face, every feature of it
could easily
decorate a portrait painter's canvas

as there was something really alive
that shone from her face
and it was as if her condition
did not exist at all, did not worry her,

as if her heart was filled with sunlight
while she started the morning
with a very attractive charming smile,
would smell a fresh picked rose

that she every day brought along
which I thought a boyfriend gave to her
and her work bore the quality
of a committed well trained person.

Even her speech wasn't
very much different
from that of any other girl
and day by day

I would watch her pray
before eating her sandwiches
in total silence
and it seemed as if she did enjoy them.

Only when the phone rang,
she did not register it
and then I was reminded
time and again that she could not hear

as she was far too much alive
to good at reading lips,
too well articulated in her speech
to even act as being deaf.