Feasts Come And Feasts Go Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

Feasts come and feasts go
And
In the turn of years
The number of feasts becomes
A number of years to
Centuries:
Such as the feast that in our street
With every calendar year new
Brings celebrations that come and
Brings celebrations that go.
But ah! memories
In the Sub-Conscious stand
Withstanding the onslaught
Of years and centuries
As an infection sweet the Sub-Conscious
Goes
And then from brain to brain will pass
In speech:
As the mothers who their sons tell
The contents of the Sub-Conscious
And thus these further to their children
Unfold
And thus the train of tradition move
To the train of the Sub-Conscious parallel.
Infectious sweet and yet passing as in
A Relay of Time from one to other.
So
My mother what you told me
Remember I
And
Treasure I
And you told what they told
You even when small on your mother’s
Lap you stood and all attentive
Heard.
Thus
Too of your remembrances multifarious
The Feast that once each year be
Celebrated
Brings in due sadness such sweet memories
And Memory becomes the glue
The chain
That in the Relay of Time joins
First to next.
And on and on continues further in
Life.
Now the Feast is come and come
In to these days of drear
Where Hope loiters alone
Single tree green of broken-hearted solitude
Amidst the drooping fading tree by tree
Of fading drear.
Memories on each other
Flow.
The Feast will come and
Go.
Yet the old wounds will become
As new wounds.
So sang of Heaven the sweet
Violins.
So flowed the memories with
Every striking of the bands
With every pace the procession-voyage
Of the Saint-Statue, with every
Peal and toll of the church-bells,
With every act, albeit tiny-small,
With every act I say and I assert
There will be old wounds that
New wounds again with
Bleeding blood anew
Will drain.
So sang of Heaven the sweet
Violins.
So sang of Heaven the sweet
Violins.