Umbrella Thorn Bush Memory Poem by Gert Strydom

(Written to A on 3 April 1988, after Ingrid Jonker)

The umbrella thorn bush memory
cannot bring you back to me
where pain now lays between us
and you have been erased out of my thoughts.
I search for tracks in the dust roads of forgetting
over which the winds of straying do blow and I do not know
if you have loved me at all,
there is nothing against which I can measure your sincerity.
From Cape Town and Gordon's Bay I did flee
back to a life in the Transvaal,
to a world without a sea or you
and now after everything has been trampled down nothing can over-bridge this.
Although sadness echoes in the feelings that had been
I have realised that you were laughing at my loss,
everywhere I see treachery and do know that my love was one-sided
and your behaviour still does astonish me.

[References:"Bitterbessie dagbreek" (Bitter-berry daybreak)by Ingrid Jonker.]