There’s A Place With Rows Of Cypress Trees Poem by Gert Strydom

There’s a place where rows of cypress trees
stand to attention
at the foot of a rocky hillock
and there are graves planted in rows.

As a child could have sworn
that there are ghosts among the graves,
when the wind went through the trees
and shadows move at night
over the graves.

We lived fifty meters away
in a old white house
and it was only
my dad, mom, brother and me.

If I were naughty
or did not want to eat my food
a man with a hat, raincoat and dark glasses
came in through the back door.

In the evenings my dad read poetry
to me and my younger brother
and his voice with the cannibal
and the rider of skimmelperd pan
resounds in me.

Untill a day that cancer
took my dad forever,
fifty meteres further.

[References: Die mensvreter and Die ruiter van skimmelperdpan by A.G. Visser.]