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Best Poems From
MICHAEL BUHAGIAR
(13 January 1954)
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9.
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BIrds in a Tree
A light breeze rustles the leaves; so calm
They sit perched along the weathered arm
Ruffling downs, or suddenly they stab
At some enemy marching sharply within.
All day they will soar to touch the sun
With beating wings, or wild worms grab,
Diving like bullets from a lowered gun.
When sky and land grow one, and flowers
Are sketched in charcoal in the lonely hours,
They will turn to their rooted home and come in.
Through the wide bedroom window I gaze.
The house lights rise to signal the close.
My head lies calm on the arm of my dear.
Soon I must beat up the suns hard rays
And dive to plunder whatever grows.
And so, lest in lust I soar too near,
And flare with the sunand the blind worm prays
For a roar of flame to assail his ear
I return, when blood lies spilt on the sky,
To my love who would stay when the sun men fly.
Michael Buhagiar
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10.
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City of Light
Taut muscles of the city,
Hard gavel without pity,
And nowhere a breast
To rest.
Old broom of witch
And lolling bitch,
Or evening maw
And whore:
The city scares
And breeds hot mares
Of night that rear
Too near.
Some thinnest veil
Or skimming sail
Gales rip to show
The shadow.
The past is a grove
Where lovers love
In shade far away
From the day.
All else is dark
But the citys park
A forest of lamps
Stamps
A coin of square gold
From a circle of old
And on its face
In place
Of the long-falling haven,
The scalp now clean-shaven,
And eyes that would disown
My own.
Michael Buhagiar
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11.
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Clapton is God (Homage to Eric Clapton 3)
Is still alive at fifty: clean of heroin,
Yet acid back then helped scour the eye
Of scum that sees two lovers sin:
The one hell-black, the other sky.
Life in one take: for the steelsprung arm
Swoops to pluck an Isis and Child
Who wail in pain as they fly from harm
While the flames are a roaring boar beguiled.
Its tusks are old moons no storm can defeat.
For a field of theogony three is enough
Yet three more and three for those years triple face.
Lionsnake born to airy Love
By the spark of Caliban he moves in grace,
And a goddess raped might kiss his feet.
Michael Buhagiar
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12.
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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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