Gert Strydom Poems

When you are inside a church
everyone there is in an own world,
while even whispers can be heard.
People may think that the church
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a person does not need icons
of saints, prophets and apostles,
or burning candles or figures
or even a big old cathedral
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(for Annelize)

Wordless your eyes will feast upon my face
for silent moments we will each other embrace
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I think back to a childhood day,
I see the thunder branching in its brilliant ray
before it bashes down blue-white
and in the rain the dirt track is a sight,
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I caught crabs where in the farm-dam they did in hiding lie,
a swarm of coots hanged screeching in the sky,
bright on the water the afternoon-sun did gleam
and when I got out on a rock anything did possible seem,
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(for Annelize)

From the depth of my heart I do you truly know,
the people that do you slander I want to smother,
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(after I. D. du Plessis, in answer to N. P. van Wyk Louw)

Motionless like skeletons the branches hang stripped, the summer is past,
the air is stuffy and the clouds are grey and black and heavy,
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(in answer to Marius Absalom)

I smell the rain that pours down and keeps falling on the wet ground
when a lightning-bolt does come down blue-white in the concrete jungle,
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(for Annelize, after Dorothy Parker)

I know a bloom that is pure pink and sometimes white
and it does blossom fragrantly during the dark night
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(after I. D. du Plessis)

I prince Abadin Tadia Tjoessoep, high-priest, Pangéran, do here swear
where I do bare witness over God's wondrous salvation and His care:
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