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Best Poems From
MICHAEL BUHAGIAR
(13 January 1954)
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1.
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Correspondences (translation from Charles Baudelaire)
Nature is a temple whose columns are alive
And confusions of sounds at times betray.
Man through a forest of symbols does strive,
And he knows them somehow as he goes on his way.
Like long-sustained echoes far away
Moving in a oneness shadowy and profound,
Vast as the darkness and the day,
Perfumes and colours and sounds correspond.
There are perfumes fresh as the flesh of an infant,
Soft as an oboe, green as a prairie,
—And others compounded, rich and triumphant,
Expanding somehow like a thing of infinity,
Like amber, musk, bergamot, and incense,
Which sing of transports of the spirit and sense.
Michael Buhagiar
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2.
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Echo Point 2: Tragedy
Stone, the emblem of the timeless become space
- Oswald Spengler
Why does the ghostly father flee
When dawn on Hamlet’s terror breaks?
It is the isles of cliffs from the blue leaf sea
Surging like golden-hooded snakes.
And why does Ophelia spurn his letters?
Why is he tortured north north west?
He has kept the cliffs of gold in fetters
And now they rebel to shatter his rest.
Why does the broad sword of Pyrrhus smash
Time and again old Priam’s skull,
His grey hairs and bones and brains to mash,
And his years of inner peace to annul?
It is the cliffs of gold so deeply cowed
Beneath the ghostly father’s fist,
Gushing like water hissing loud
From the ruptured skin of some occult cyst.
Rosencrantz is dead, and Guildenstern
Too, destroyed by their own device:
A garland of roses his hard hands spurn,
To the star of gold his eyes are ice:
A nought that would his quaking neck grip tight,
A sun stretch out its gold cliff hands
To guide him up to the shimmering light
From the fetid crypt where Onan stands.
Why does the dagger pause unthrust
As Claudius bends his back to his prayers,
Whose words pile up like stirless dust
As no dream in the careless heavens flares?
It is the cliffs of gold in the naked steel
Surging like a prick from its wrinkled hood,
Which Hamlet’s loins must never feel,
Such is the father’s fear of wood.
The old man behind the hanging lurks
As Hamlet fires the faggots of speech:
The forge of the gypsy poet works
Cliffs that yearn to the heavens to reach.
The flames lick up toward Gertrude’s eyes
Where, deep within, the cliffs glow gold
Like the face of a painted whore that lies.
Now his pants the bulging tackle hold
As the blade thrusts through the silky flesh
To fish the old man from virtual sleep,
A monster calf in a Cretan crčche
He feeds with blood as the teeth strike deep.
What is the gift the pearl fishers brought
Which rests at the bottom of Gertrude’s cup?
It is the cliffs of gold Ulysses caught
In the blue leaf sea, and ferried up.
Though flames may lick and winds abrade
And the hammer of Thor enraged pound,
The cliffs of gold must never degrade
To the seed that falls on stony ground.
Why does the ghostly father flee
When dawn on Hamlet’s terror breaks?
From the cliffs of gold he shrinks to see
The truth that slack the old codpiece makes.
Michael Buhagiar
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3.
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Light My Fire (Homage to Jim Morrison 2)
Let the Shadow inflict collateral damage
On Venus who alights from a shell to the shore
To light your fire as the chill winds rage
And vipers strike from the blossomless floor;
And let the Shadow’s gunships even pound
The trees that surge as the fresh year blooms
And the land and the folk who, all seasons round,
Within stony walls find precarious rooms:
It is the door, the door, strong hewn from oak
Whose roots strike deep as the head branch soars,
Lets pass fresh air or forbids the strafe.
And if its hinge should fail those rooms would choke
Or lodging be given to thundering boars,
As the round dances on in the valleys of Alph.
Michael Buhagiar
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4.
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Before I Met You
Spring would come with shafts of light
To make love to dark earth in the morning dew,
But the frost would bite too deep at night
And the beds were all bare, before I met you.
To think of love was like shaking hands
With a friend whose name I no longer knew.
I would walk alone along moonlit strands
And gaze deep into rivers, before I met you.
Before I met you, my plans were as birds
Betrayed to snow as they blindly flew,
For want of the line of a song without words
To guide them on, before I met you.
Long absence would fall like a massive tor
Unseen each day from a cloudless blue,
As I’d frozen stand before my dreadful door
To learn again what was deep and true.
My past was a perfect globe of gold
To where every day my dreaming flew,
And girls would my soul in their arms enfold
And say they loved me, before I met you.
Before I met you, my poems were as photos
Framed in wallets, and I would rue
The routine smiles and lifted brows,
And hold my gorgeous children from view,
Before I met you, and love was a pang
Whose blade struck deep, yet the weakest glue
I would crave to weep as Caruso sang,
Before I met you, before I met you.
Michael Buhagiar
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