Against The Gold Of Your Eyes Poem by Gert Strydom

(for Daleen a dirge, after C. Louis Leipoldt)

Against the gold of your eyes the sun has a dull-white colour
and I do wonder about you and the divorce that is happening between us,
over the things that do come over your lips and how painfully you do keep astounding me
where my heart does break a thousand times from sorrow and is continually torn.

Against the red of your lips blood is somewhat pale
and between you and me a lifetime of secrets are hidden
but when you and your children do despise me and trample on my humanity
then my existence does continually break

and here where I am mourning over you and our relationship that is ending
in the near future I do see no light
and although I would plant a thousand flowers and coral-trees and jacarandas
nothing does keep that what does remain between us in balance

and where your children for five years have come between you and me,
do continually with their words and deeds bring hurt and astonishment,
as if they have got the right and might to decide over our lives
my own life like a whirlpool do now turn around and around

where the bright blue of the new tomorrows
continually do grow faint against the dark thunderclouds
and while slowly-slowly my days do run out
I do wonder what does remain in the silences of the remembering?

[Reference: "Teen die blou van die jakarandas" (Against the blue of the jacarandas) by C. Louis Leipoldt.]