I Walked Into This Vista Poem by Gert Strydom

I walked into this Vista
to work there
and the garden was beautiful,
but in such a place
I did not want to stay
and nobody will get me
into such a place.

The people that work there
were decent, friendly and god fearing
and a patient followed me,
as if I am the leader
in a game
and a woman walk stark naked
and asked me
where the president’s office is
and if I came from the parliament?

That this Vista is a wonderful place
when life’s walls fold in on you
and life loose all its meaning
and you hear voices in your mind,
nobody can deny,
and I saw people find God there
while there humanity
and life tried to destroy them.


a Polish doctor wanted to know from me
why the grass in summer
is yellow brown and dried out,
while the winter chill was biting me
and I wondered
from which Siberia she comes.

I saw there that specialist doctors
are also people
and there were rumours
that some of the doctors
had more serious problems
than their patients
and that one has a drawer
full of crumbled paper
which he hoards like a rat.
and I wondered how a doctor
that lived next to the hospital
opened his garden gate with his feet.

Electric shocks that goes straight through you
and hypnotic therapy
can pass me by
and the day that I walked out of there,
it was better
than escaping from a jail
and I could comprehend
Ingrid Jonker’s poem much better
and maybe the damage
was more in her soul
than in that Valkenburg.

[Reference: Ontvlugting by Ingrid Jonker.]