More poetry from Malta
_______
Lino Buhagiar
WET DREAM
I dreamed last night
I kissed her lips
and she became taut
her mouth became tight
and with steps shy and measured
more beautiful than ever
she walked back out
into the rain and left me drenched but
hoping she’d kiss my lips
in her limpid, illicit dreams at night
MOON
She looked up at the clouds and their silver shores,
and stopped making love to him
by word of mouth; with the down of her head,
black as the new moon,
she veiled his eyes.
And then he slept. She walked into his dream
before love could become the practical business
of everyday life, and there she remains,
where she carries in her womb
the capricious moon.
He sits in his organic space, trapped within the skin she’d kissed,
watching her when she is round,
rising red and losing hue
until, a pale lady, she whets the timeless sea;
he is now an old man.
No longer can he see himself soaked to the eyes
in impractical sadness;
he still prefers to drink his own tears than forget
as not remembering seems to him to be
a preamble to death.
He touched her
and let
her touch him.
He embraced her
and let
her embrace him.
He kissed her
and let
her kiss him.
The long thread draws its breath
as she sews him a shirt
more like a surplice.
He watches her deft use
of the needle
on creased secular stuff.
She had dished out all her love,
a wild, scansioning sea, all over him,
unmoved, ungrateful shore.
Then he grew up. Finally
fell out of her eroded grasp
like dust.
Among the creases in her face
sits the concertina of her mouth
chewing the sutured silence.
ETERNITY
O,
but how small
a word
it is.
