(after Thomas Hardy and S. J. Pretorius)
Outside after twilight a bloody-red moon rises,
the autumn-wind sings its own disconsolate song,
it’s cloudy when the song of a redbreast does leave me speechless,
it bursts through the world’s grey and cold sorrow,
as if something beautiful will appear in the new morning
that small bird does twitter and calls on the rain to begin,
it’s as if all other sounds do disappear before the clear purity
when it sings over how the world does exist and our lot and meaning in it,
it calls on God in the darkest night’s blackness
and that bird does twitter and sing so ecstatic happy,
as if it does know that the Lord is the light to all things
so that nothing that comes near can avoid that sound
and when the first lightning-bolt suddenly does bash down blue-white
I still hear him so utterly rejoicing.
© Gert Strydom
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