Sonnets to someone special
I. There was a time
In the past there was a time
when magic was everywhere around me
and the loving between us
seemed so strong
as if it could outlast
even life itself
making moments sublime
and through the years
I have loved other girls
but never as deep as then
and no relationship was as enchanting
as with you
and no woman was as smitten with me
as when we were young at university.
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poem by Gert Strydom
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Monstrosities That I Observe Among Christians
I. It’s a monstrosity that some people believe
It’s a monstrosity that some people believe
that a deadly illness,
poverty, loss of a job and income
and every disaster that happens daily to people
results from their sin,
where people live outside the hand of God
and when I think about a one-year-old child
that is dying of cancer,
see how people that were wealthy
now is on the street,
it reminds me about Job,
while there is still trust and hope
in the biggest darkness.
II. That the eating of meat is sin
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poem by Gert Strydom
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Nights and days (in answer to T.S. Eliot)
I
The summer day draws to a end
with its last light spent
with blaring television sets,
at the racetrack, people checking their last bets
children playing in passageways
that had seen better days
and in city block after city block
with flower pots being displayed
on balconies
the rain patters down
and time stretches to seven o’clock
in another rundown town
where vagrants stand under trees in vacant lots
trying to shelter against the rainy breeze
as human beings with spirits, stripped gone
when the streetlamps go on
one after another first flickering
and prostitutes indiscreetly start to walk the streets
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poem by Gert Strydom
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a Brave Boer boy
At Italeni the bushes come alive
and abound with a horde of Zulu’s,
of which the spears glitter
and some are at the peak
of a hillock
and others on the plane.
Blood and fat
are spread over their faces
and they are raging
and in a blood thirsty trance
and scream luring
and tipple with a ritteltit war dance
and clubs and shields,
are thrown into the air
while spears flash into the air.
In the cloudless blue sky
an eagle flies past screaming,
while Boer horsemen
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poem by Gert Strydom
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My buddies (a reply to Boris Slutsky)
All young white men at a time
was forced into the military, into war
or had to serve a three year jail term
and most of my buddies came home,
but some did not:
Parachuting into a enemy camp
there was one close friend that died,
the other three I hardly knew
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
seven hundred and fifty
enemy SWAPO and Cuban casualties
and on one patrol one close buddy
stepped on a landmine
were blown up and no one else was hurt,
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
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poem by Gert Strydom
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When times are bad
When times are bad
and I am with my hands in my hair
and black foreigners from all over Africa
overnight becomes citizens
and have more rights as a citizen than me
and affirmative action
puts her claws into my life
then I wonder about justice
and when merit and experience
will ever again apply
where my ancestors Joost Strydom
from Liefenshoek in the Netherlands
as a merchant seaman of the VOC
in 1678 came to Cape Town,
married his pretty well know wife
Maryna Ras who with a horse
could alone ride days long to Cape Town
with whom noblemen tried to have relationships,
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poem by Gert Strydom
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Home invasion in Springs
Masked like the black criminals
that robs you of your car
and just there and there promises you death,
they arrived
with a mini bus taxi on the farm,
drove right through the farm gate
and at the front door
jumped out of the kombi
with five steps intruded into the house
to bring death to the farmer,
to rape the wife
and daughter.
The farmer heard the crash
at the gate,
he realized that it was big trouble
heard them in their own language command
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poem by Gert Strydom
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Punishment parade
I was in residence in Salisbury house
at the private university
lying at the foot
of Helderberg mountain
when in my fourth year
somebody with a master key
broke in to my room
stole clothes
and some bottles of cool drink
and even took a cake
out of the refrigerator.
Nols, a first year friend,
who was studying the same degree
was fresh out of the army
where he had been a lieutenant
and caught the thief red handed
stealing from his room
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poem by Gert Strydom
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Harare
The midsummer sun hangs flaming
over the capitol city
which is painted white,
(the same colour as the graves)
in a country
stripped from the white man’s might,
stripped from providing
and exporting food, minerals
and products
where the value of the currency
changes faster than the billion dollar number
printed on the worthless bills.
Just here and there a car moves
as the country is without fuel
and even the traffic lights
are not working
(and neither are most people)
as the electricity is down.
.
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poem by Gert Strydom
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A War Story
There’s a story that have being told
(and I do not know if there is truth to it) ,
that after the slaughtering
of the 47th FAPLA / Cuban brigade at the intersection
of the Lomba and Cuzizi Rivers in Angola,
the mauling of several brigades on the way
to Cuito Cuanavale and the destruction
of that military airfield, the loss of many soldiers,
the destruction of nine Mig fighters
and the loss of huge amounts of Soviet equipment
Fidel Castro was very angry and in a terrible rage
brought his Cuban soldiers in Angola
up to fifty thousand, sent four hundred tanks
and his best pilots to Angola,
after the South African forces had withdrawn
which resulted in the Mig-23 attack
on the Calueque dam
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poem by Gert Strydom
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