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Best Poems From
MICHAEL BUHAGIAR
(13 January 1954)
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5.
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Echo Point 1: Echo Point, The Blue Mountains
Stone, the emblem of the timeless become space
- Oswald Spengler
The Three Sisters sing ‘You Can’t Hurry Love.’
The floor spreads out in rolling waves,
All tidal pulses and sailors’ graves,
And swells of broccoli carpet above.
The cliffs surge into awestruck view,
Like planes of war on a carrier’s deck
That once hid in its vast infernal neck
Till lips convulsed to gape and spew.
Persephone blooms from hell to the air.
The gravedigger climbs an invisible stair
To the stage, in each rustic hand a long bone,
And grinning strikes a lively tune
On a row of skulls, as the theatre’s stone
Looms raw, as if for a cathedral hewn.
Michael Buhagiar
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6.
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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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7.
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Rider on the Storm (Homage to Jim Morrison)
Adios to the lands and great house, Caballero,
A kiss for the Lady in White and your friends,
For you ride out to meet the wild Toronegro
Pounding the plain, and the world on you depends.
Now that sombre shape as the moon is dawning
Behind you is not yet horned with sails,
And a blade through the neck will dropp him, fawning,
In a test which your fool on his ass ever fails.
Though the bull should blast into stormswept hells
All knights, you shine even there, dimmed never.
For the bullet has not yet has culled the white horn
Nor the navy lowered its dark-mouthed barrels
To blast the last steed into kingdom ever
From a cloistered village, just before you were born.
Michael Buhagiar
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8.
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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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