Michael Buhagiar Poems

Let the Shadow inflict collateral damage
On Venus who alights from a shell to the shore
To light your fire as the chill winds rage
And vipers strike from the blossomless floor;
...

Spring would come with shafts of light
To make love to dark earth in the morning dew,
But the frost would bite too deep at night
And the beds were all bare, before I met you.
...

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.
...

From zero to zero an ice wind sweeps
As dark chords close the movement of day,
And the sky a mist of moisture weeps
On the loved one beached in a wave-lashed bay.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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,
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In the long arms of mother let him sleep
With her eyes bent above
To gaze through locks that steep
...

(In Fisher Library, University of Sydney)


The floors to the top are numbered five
...

The birds sit ranged along the tree’s high limb
As day slips back into thickening dark,
Their twig toes gripping the still warm bark,
And massed cries wailing in ecstatic hymn.
...