Sound Of Silence Poem by Michael Buhagiar

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,
In a year endowed with moveable feasts.

I kept an inward mental table
Where to every priest I gave a cell:
A heaven-kissing Tower of Babel
Whose apex held a thoroughbred stable
Of Pegasus-seekers who had come back from hell.

To suffer meekly is to kill creativity:
The camel must grow to a lion, then child.
The laurel-bearers, we were growing in gravity
Yet prowling the stage for the likely absurdity,
Often swelling in uproar, like a grandstand gone wild.

One there was only, a Phar Lap and Daniel
Who so shone that Ssshh! was our loudest word;
—Hissed sidelong, as a cancerous cell
Was borne on the charm of a whispered spell,
As gift from the isle of his rapture profferred.