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Best Poems From
MICHAEL BUHAGIAR
(13 January 1954)
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5.
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Antiquarian
On the topmost shelf there stands an old man,
Still straight, his jeacket lettered in gold
About a hard frame; and those blotches and frays
Sing gladly of harrowing trials of old.
'The Poems of Blake': a two inch span
Of spine, and on the cover the Ancient of Days.
Not his tale alone he steps down to tell.
For the inside page is inscribed in ink:
'To Lucas with love from Pamela, Christmas
1918' - in full curves that link,
Then two kisses, and a line concludes the spell,
A wave rolling in from a time that was.
Perhaps it was a call to abandon home
For a dusky Circe and the Blessed Isles,
And its triumphs were told over ruby wine
As eyes held eyes in knowing smiles
By candlelight... Take my hand, old man, and come
And my hoard of years shall be the measure of thine.
Michael Buhagiar
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6.
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At Fort Arthur, Western Australia
A solitary cannon to the sunset points.
Idle gunners talk and smoke
And hook their heels in the sandstones joints
In a world the gaping centuries cloak.
Wind disturbs the waters shape.
Piled rocks locked suppress and curb
The seas tall lust to press and rape
The curfewed hulls. God is a verb.
I have journeyed here to the wilder west
In search of the darker side of my brain,
Where the sun goes down to a basement club
To emerge at dawn from a lightless quest.
And I follow now, as the shadows stain,
To return to myself through dirt plains and scrub
Michael Buhagiar
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7.
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Beethoven's Father
Towers, turrets, high walls all made
Of sand gold-gleaming in noonday rays
He would send his son with bucket and spade
To build and build under stringent gaze.
He worshipped him who had built the first,
Yet could not help staring, against his will,
At the hard waves slaking the castles thirst
As twilight fell; and it tortured him still.
One storm-lashed night of pounding foam
He stripped and ran to catch a wave
Which snapped his pretzel spine with ease.
Now the boy all day remains at home,
And wields a delving pen to brave
The pulse and roar of night-coped seas.
Michael Buhagiar
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8.
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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 Id 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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