Intimately I Know You Poem by Gert Strydom

(In answer to Aleister Crowley)

Intimately I know you from your finger-tips
the ways you act and react in every role,
the smile and softness of your rosy lips
your spirit, body and your soul

but you choose to send each great and good memory
into forgetfulness and total oblivion,
as if nothing more of us is for you deemed to be
and I am of disregard and ignorance a scion,

as if like a demonic being you do me expel
while to me you are more than all of life,
where you heart and soul holds for me heaven and hell
and I struggle to comprehend while you remain my wife,

you are my only love as God do grant our years.
I know loneliness is neither great nor good
and in joy and great sadness you bring me tears
choose to have away from me solitude

and I call on God the designer and moulder of all,
while my heart, spirit and soul is full of pain,
where I am powerless and infinitely small
to bring you back into my life again

that He do my life set while on you I wait,
where He and His omnipotence is infinitely great.

[Reference: "At Sea" by Aleister Crowley.


Poet's note: I am quoting "At Sea" by Aleister Crowley here:


"At Sea" by Aleister Crowley

"As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul."

"Such lights she gave as guide my bark;
But I am swallowed in the swell
Of her heart's ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell."

"In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In her I die, a sterile shoot
Of nightshade in oblivion."

"In her my elf dissolves, a grain
Of salt cast careless in the sea;
My passion purifies my pain
To peace past personality."

"Love of my life, God grant the years
Confirm the chrism - rose to rood!
Anointing loves, asperging tears
In sanctifying solitude! "

"Man is so infinitely small
In all these stars, determinate.
Maker and moulder of them all,
Man is so infinitely great! "]
© Gert Strydom