|
|
|
Best Poems From
MICHAEL BUHAGIAR
(13 January 1954)
|
|
| |
|
|
9.
|
Echo Point 4: Theme in a Bass Clef
Stone, the emblem of the timeless become space
- Oswald Spengler
What do the isles of cliffs encode
Placed like studs of gold with such art
That this velvet shows an endless road
To the eye that quests for the hidden heart?
It is this, the secret heart of the matter,
Rising from the sunless depths of the sea
That the Holy Grail within may utter
The Word of God from its every tree.
Thus, the palimpsest yawns the planes to disgorge,
And the roar they make is the gravedigger’s song,
And the flames of Gertrude’s faggots forge
A bomb that for rudeness of cliffs atones.
For the cliffs are dark when drowned below,
But, lifting their cheeks to the sun, they glow.
Michael Buhagiar
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
10.
|
Homage to Eric Clapton
A seed once fell onto English terrain
Where wars had thicked the soil with much blood;
And its roots struck deep into Satan’s brain
On the side where feeling and melody bud.
And it thrust through years like a rebel army
Though deserted by sun and the rain close behind;
And a luthier culled one of its strongest rami
To craft an instrument with Segovia in mind.
Now the southwind spurs its belly, and there rears
Chaliapin, Sinatra, Caruso, all capped
By a song that crowns like cream the milch tree;
And a dark and haggard dryad appears
From a bole and croaks it is Clapton trapped,
And by the soaring topmost branch set free.
Michael Buhagiar
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
11.
|
I Honestly Love You
If this vow of affection is simply true
Don’t tell me why you had to speak it:
A spell was settling and you had to break it,
I know, for it would chill and entomb you.
A fate some ghost from your past was weaving,
Her lips once offered, then snatched away
Perhaps…A warmth whose feeling is believing,
That you sensed, before all, in the light of day.
No… like driftwood washed to an island
Where thick-rooted green sets free the bough,
You suffer in silence, and sing to me, now,
A lament for a time undead, at hand.
For truth, like poetry, must come from the heart,
As honest as tears that slip to the floor,
As plain to the sense as Cupid’s dart.
I hear truth’s beat, a wounded roar
That floods through your transparent art
To reach where waters surge and pore:
With open arms, and with knowing heart,
From here to forever, I come to your shore.
In memoriam Peter Allen
Michael Buhagiar
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
12.
|
Sound of Silence
Each lecture hall was a book of hours,
Its pages written by different priests.
We plunged to engage the dismal powers
And gazed from the decks of dawning towers,
In a year endowed with moveable feasts.
I kept an inward mental table
Where to every priest I gave a cell:
A heaven-kissing Tower of Babel
Whose apex held a thoroughbred stable
Of Pegasus-seekers who had come back from hell.
To suffer meekly is to kill creativity:
The camel must grow to a lion, then child.
The laurel-bearers, we were growing in gravity
Yet prowling the stage for the likely absurdity,
Often swelling in uproar, like a grandstand gone wild.
One there was only, a Phar Lap and Daniel
Who so shone that Ssshh! was our loudest word;
—Hissed sidelong, as a cancerous cell
Was borne on the charm of a whispered spell,
As gift from the isle of his rapture profferred.
Michael Buhagiar
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|