Pilgrimage Poem by Gert Strydom

(after A. G. Visser)

In Goan beyond the entrance of Miramar
there is a desert full of danger
but the Sultan Mirza Khan goes to Isfahan
on a pilgrimage with every official.

Quickly his wife Fatima runs to the curtain,
she sends her mute illiterate slaves to and thro
look in the direction of the dry desert,
already hear the dogs barking in the distance

where Fatima is getting the palace ready,
for the Emir of the Bedouin her heart does beat wildly
where on an Arabian horse he comes for his own pilgrimage
as she does love that wild barbarian

and still today Mirza Khan is on his way to Isfahan:

My neighbour across the street
stays out at night to very late
as a very high freemason
and when he leaves the suburb

I see the curtains stir at his house
where his wife is peeping towards the road,
where a man comes riding in on a motorbike
and like a dove at the door she coos for him.

[Reference: "Divan" by A. G. Visser.]

© Gert Strydom