A poem by Ingrid Jonker (1933-65): 'Ek het gedink...'

I’d thought...

I’d thought it possible I could forget you

and in the mild night sleep alone at ease,

naively I’d not grasped that I would get to

awaken at each stirring of a breeze:

That I would feel your soft hand gently grazing

my neck as I lay slumbering in the dark –

I’d thought the fire that I felt in me blazing

would cool down like the star-trail’s silver arc.

Our lives are like a song’s now my belief

in which our parting’s anguished note is plain

and all joy one day flows back into grief

to be engulfed in loneliness again.

To see the original poem, go to here