I Call On Your True Love* Poem by Gert Strydom

(for Annelize, in answer to Alan Seeger)

I call on true love in its simple ways:
do not want to leave a single line unwrit;
want to bring today to you great praise,
where time and again into my life you do fit,

while more than a year another do me betray,
and why she acts this way nobody do know,
that you are precious I want to say,
while utterly lonely past all my days go.

Full of technology my Android rings,
portray you in a gentle pink-white hue,
with your own known voice to me it sings,
your words and acts tell me you are true,

where now distance do not confine and bound,
while for a word, a smile my heart craves
and from the abyss you bring me to solid ground,
from life's tempest and its crushing waves.
[Reference: "All that's not love" by Alan Seeger.

Poet's note: I am quoting this lovely poem of Alan Seeger:


"All that's not love" by Alan Seeger

"All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,
The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
The altar unset and the candle unlit."

"Let me survive not the lovable sway
Of early desire, nor see when it goes
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,
Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose."

"The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings
The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue
The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,
But even with their beauty life fades from them too."

"No more would I linger past Love's ardent bounds
Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves,
That, burden and essence of all that surrounds,
Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves."]
© Gert Strydom