As I My Steps Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

As I my steps
Along the grated streets
Of sweet Valletta I retraced
I passed from street to street
And I me thought that I could find
The dwelling where you lived.

For me those streets familiar quite
Became as dearer and dearer
As I from city street to street
My steps retraced their bearer

Aye! Aye! The streets became as dearer
And beautiful more than I had seen
For years and years before:
The pregnant windows frowning black
Unmoving ghosts in city pent
I wandered quite what did they hide
Behind their closed doors:
The small quaint front doors in the street
A few light inches the cobble stones above
With memories faint and dim
And with fast-fretting hither and thither
The hazy residents of those small abodes
Hid from my anxious questioning sight.

And as I passed along the street
A chimney high I saw smiling with glee
As it played child-like with white passing clouds
Above the warm sun shone on the old stones
That dreamt and dreamt and dreamt of years untold.

Aye! Aye! The city old
Above the harbor glideth
In my warm dreams:
The sailing clouds
Above the trees
In the small garden passing:
The green leaves
In their high towers
With each to each
In their wild love-making
To each and each are rustling:
The citizens in city streets
With hurried steps are passing.
And whither do they pass
And thither do they go?

The silent steps
In the small sullen street
I start descending
As if some thief to catch
That in some city nook
From me is hiding:
A lazy cat
Watches with half-open’d eye:
Little beyond
The stench of its urine
Drown’d by the sweet sense
Of roses pent in mortar cask
And hanging from the city wall.

Yes! Time is passing
In this sweet silent city of my dreams:
Let me allow it pass
Into the ocean sea-blue
That in midst of it
Like as in lover’s arms
My senses and myself will sink.

And I will not speak
And I will not sing
If not my lyre speaks
If not my lyre sings.