How Great The Palace Stands Poem by Gert Strydom

I

How great the palace stands
with its golden domes
in a city that is on seven hills,
snow white where it towers seven times.

As if everything holy, righteous and wonderful
comes to stature in it,
where hymns are constantly sung,
in the inner court and at the outside

with a central stela as a sign
of life originating, pointing into the air,
with the moon and sun meeting,
rises and dies as in ancient heathen worship,

circled twice,
almost like the throne of God Himself
and year in and out
have been seen as the very fortress against evil.

This place is full of light and darkness that mixes,
much like the checked surface of a chess board,
maybe symbolic of a cycle of life and death,
that is eternal for these people?


II

After a journey over the whole earth,
coming from far as a pilgrim,
the traveller looks at the big palace,
later he stops in front of a copper door,

where there are soldiers on guard duty
and these symbols are depicted on that door:

Jesus Christ on the cross, the death of Mary,
death by torture, death on earth,
or in space,
symbols of the communion,
a vine and sheaf of wheat

and on the edge of the door
birds of the night and day
and thus again light and darkness:
a dead dove, a sleeping guinea pig,
a hedgehog, a night owl,
a tortoise bitten to death by a snake
and a threatening raven.