Gert Strydom Poems

(in answer to N.P. Van Wyk Louw)

Our love came to perfection,
between twelve o'clock and half past one,
...

(after Lina Spies)

My Lord, You made Eve for Adam,
did touch them with Your image and the breath of life.
...

(in answer to Louis Esterhuizen)

This morning my VW Polo drives down the N1,
the road snake-stripe through the High-Veldt,
...

My dark-head princess in Lowenstein,
tonight it's the same moon that shines above us,
from the storeys of your palace
you can see the horizon disappearing behind the sea.
...

I listen to and watch a young man
on a scouting reconnaissance mission
on the frontline in the Ukraine,
where they are only two soldiers
...

(after Piet van Rooyen)

My doll, my loveliest thing,
I cannot get my messages to you without electricity,
...

(in answer to Breyten Breytenbach)

Pain is something that exist as a part of feeling,
it's an utter kind of thing between good and bad:
...

{after Uys Krige)

So easily her words did enchant me,
made me in love with how se does the world see.
...

For I know what plans that I have for you,
"declares the LORD, "plans for well-being,
and not for calamity, in order to give you
a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29: 11.
...

(after Christopher Marlowe, in answer to Sir Walter Raleigh)

I remember the days we were young
and your sweet name were on my tongue,
...