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Best Poems From
MICHAEL BUHAGIAR
(13 January 1954)
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13.
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A Look
Those eyes so black; that gaze so blank.
Black like witching moons her eyes
When stars burn the night with lonely cries,
That through foam to the floor of my ocean sank.
Eyes like the vaults of a global bank
That takes all for growth when the tenant dies,
With heaps of gold that to the ceilings rise,
That to test its worth my coinage drank.
Eyes wherein smouldered Greek fire.
Eyes that would prove me a frozen liar,
Inherited straight from African Eve,
Black as the maw of a low-toned bell,
The notes of a cello that for summer grieve,
The hangman as he opens the door of my cell.
Michael Buhagiar
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14.
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A Tree
It starts with a seed, whose segments gather
A trust protecting the wealth of their ancestry
With promise of flowers and a soaring majesty
And fruits to ravish you, like any other;
That falls in a desert, whose miles might smother
With still weight of air and the noons easy clarity.
Yet its God, staring hard, has sensed there Eternity
And, groping in blindness, it takes Him for mother.
Now its roots are foothills, and a breezes pass
MIght shatter that length; while its fruits are sparse
And brittle, and no moisture give or need.
Yet, sitting at its foot, a poet meditates,
And though he cast away the sterile seed
Its mortal flesh he loves, assimilates.
Michael Buhagiar
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15.
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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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16.
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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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