Aqra / Read 2019

I only understand
what I project onto you
what the foreign language
unchains
out of its strange music

Ritratt / Photo: Pascual Borzelli

My beauty that intimidates,
that annoys without speaking,
that weakens.
My beauty that prognosticates,
that eclipses me,
that betrays me.

Ritratt / Photo: Dmitri Kotjuh.

I will count and recount the ways
in which a poem turns slowly
into the story I wasn’t writing,
was always writing,
into the sharp clear sound of morning,
ancestral and strong.

Ritratt / Photo: Richard Hooton.

tgħid postna ma kienx hemm
lil hinn mil-limiti
ta’ kull
żmien
u forsi ħadd mill-antenati
ma ried jixhed …
li qatt rana flimkien
lili u lilek?

Ritratt / Photo: Mario Mintoff

Your games are upsetting; they always seem like they’re going to end in tears. Like this one you’re playing right now, for example — I’ve just woken up to find myself blindfolded, with my hands tied to the chair I’m sitting on.

Xi rrid nagħmel biex nitlaq?
Hawn min iqum u jitlaq. Iqum filgħodu, jilbes, jiftaħ il-bieb u joħroġ. U ma jerġax jiġi lura. Hekk. Bla pjan. Bla tħejjija. Jew forsi ħajtu kollha sa dak il-punt kienet fil-fatt tħejjija biżżejjed biex jum fost l-oħrajn taqbiżlu u jaqbad u jitlaq. Hekk. Ħabta u sabta.

Ritratt / Photo: Kenneth Scicluna

With the summer all our friends have left.
Such memories …
At the instant of farewell your life turns transparent and so
it can look
at itself without grief.

Ħudni miegħek
ngħaddu l-linji mkemmxa,
insewwu t-tiċrit
tal-Mediterran.
Jekk hemm post għalija,
ħallini ninħall
bejn il-fili rotob
ta’ laħmek.

Ritratt / Photo: Virginia Monteforte

In her eyes the smile of having
met her man before the rabbit hutch
a gentle, acrid morning
when his greeting was but
a couple coarse and heavenly lines.

I’m a sudden coolness in the air I’m coming down
rain — the kind the eye can see like Poet playing air guitar
love home envy kitchen table a complex of occasions
like my mother playing solitaire. She listens to the radio.

Ritratt / Photo: Philip Hancock

Erbgħin għodwa mil-lum sa tmiem is-sena,
ħa nindem minn kull għelt, niskonġra l-biża’,
nerġa’ nifrex il-mappa, inġibha f’postha,
f’tarf il-ħabel nerġa’ niddritta l-boxxla
’mbagħad jew inkompli għal triqti, jew ninfena.

Ritratt / Photo: Sunshine Coast Writers Festival

The last ritual.
That day, I prayed in a tongue
I did not understand,
In a language, I did not speak.
I laugh.
Rain bouncing on my back,
My wrinkles hiding the passage of time,
Living as a stranger amongst my own.

Ritratt / Photo: Paul Musso at Hay Festival