Love And Loving Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Robert Browning)

Right through spring
I bought her bunches of roses and carnations
that were flowering
wrote verses in anticipation
that somehow these things would catch her eye
but she had even thrown a sheave away to die.

In mere meagre words
I tried to put all of my love,
as my feelings to my wife to prove
but her actions were cutting me like swords
when she chose another above me,
demanded from our marriage to be free.

During our separation I phoned her
and she acted as if I were someone unknown
while in the background I heard her lover whisper
and around me my entire world had fallen down
while she acted in iniquity
and I heard them both laugh in glee.

l’Envoi
Since then many years have gone
while with other women my life went on
and I know love and loving well,
that it can be either heaven or hell.

[Reference: “One way of love” by Robert Browning.]