So, like a bird Poem by Antoine Cassar

This screwed-in nerve, these skinflakes of yesterday,
and the fatigue continues. Down through the urban pastures,
this heavy body I carry along the street of masks,
flux of ink hardening between harsh fibres of iron,

song perched in the leaves drowned by engines scratching the air,
cartridges, heavy baggage, nuts, scurvy sold in flasks,
-my brain is a mosaic, like a chaos of pebbles-,
angst with hungry teeth, rubble all around,

ah, the entrails of things! Here they are requesting a line of verse
-yes, with a wistful sigh, a voice gone sombre and dusky,
with a sulky chin, refined anger, a simile with the face of Lascaris-,
tell me, how many times must I say 'the sea', 'the sea' ?

So, like a bird to fly through sky unseen unheard,
a word free from its form, a sound in beauty blurred,

in flight, upwards, up there, on the wind I go,
until my long undressed shadow with the first horizon disappears…

to slide onto the cushion of the damp setting sun,
refuge until the awakening, the world a cradle-rhyme.