Poems of Schembri Karl

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KARL SCHEMBRI

Translations by Albert Gatt

The void strips words...

The void strips words of metaphor

and similes are vacuous when

a medical chart is all you’ve time for

the clatter of what pills remain

in the white dispenser.

Blankets soak up your dreams

the night is buried

the smiles on children’s faces in the street

become incomprehensible

and every scream a knife stab

each embrace betrayal

and though the calendar

promised a new moon this evening

it’s nowhere to be seen.

You must believe, she said and

an atheist in thrall to superstition

a soothsayer burdened by the past

I believed in you.

Should you have time

should you happen to pass by

bring along the colours

I left behind at yours

since when I’ve painted all with blood and tears

I’ve painted in the dark night of the soul

I’ve painted madness

you.

It’s cold...

The evening’s cold without you

and death seems to impend on

the lemons, oranges, the plant we sowed

in the garden where we tasted

our lips’ delight;

only the dew smell lingers

from the freshness entangled in your hair

the light tap of fingers gone astray

an empty wine glass beside the full one

our scribbles on my bedroom wall

your name in seven languages carved into the door

the dreams we painted on the sky;

but they do nothing to diminish

the cold this evening

the cold of a long night without you

the unending dark.

Another night

Another night without you.

Where are you?

I took the winding lanes

beneath the glimmer of streetlamps

and the stares of statues

in niches on darklit corners

beneath the hopeful stars

and flowers in bloom

longing the breath of you.

I spoke to the wind

gave it your name

wrapped in a scrap of paper that flew

towards the moon.

I spoke to the rain

it snatched my tears and hid them;

I wonder, did the downpour

drench you too?

Yakubu / Detention centre, Hal Safi

Not far from the airport

Yakubu

repairs his television to replace

the lines and static

with the colours, pictures beamed

from every corner

his village too, perhaps,

where they grew up,

Yakubu and his mates.

Through the window he can see

a plane lies in a hangar

being repaired.

The engineers, as clever as Yakubu

seem fairer

better dressed

more fortunate.

Tourists on planes are different

from those who land in boats;

they get an in-flight meal,

tickets don’t cost a life;

they won’t be screened for illness, though

some liquids might be confiscated

a pen-knife or some lighter fluid

forgotten in their carry-on baggage.

It’s different for Yakubu.

Yakubu fled.

Yakubu had no ticket, though

he paid a thousand dollars for a place

among another twenty-six inside a boat

huddled in the dust-strewn night

of Tripoli.

Six days amid the waves

the sea trying to snatch

the hull between its teeth

beneath a heedless sun.

The police lost no time asking whether

there were goods to declare

the duty’s paid, here’s the receipt:

Yakubu and his mates

alive and lost

sun-blistered, drenched

huddled in the black bus

and staring blankly through its windows

at the stinking black boat

from which their dreams had fallen

one by one

to drown

at the bottom of the sea.

Jenin 3

No fault of yours, Samir,

that the world is so cruel.

No fault of yours, Samir,

that you find no love in this world.

No fault of yours, Samir,

that soldiers are targeting your homeland.

No fault of yours, Samir,

that your house is gone.

Armoured trucks are trampling over

your mother's remains

and Fatima your neighbour is weeping in the street.

In the dark, your sister huddles beneath the table

and your friend lies face down with his eyes closed.

But it's no fault of yours, Samir,

that the moon tonight has gone into hiding.

Now get some sleep, Samir, get some sleep.

Pripjet – The phantom village of Chernobyl

They saw the flames from here

said Vlodymir to me when

instead of the sun

we saw the chimney tip on the horizon

from the horizontal beam

of what used the be a bridge.

The bridge that Ivan crossed

in a Zastava

his wife moaning in the backseat

his daughter weeping

and his insides consumed

by infernal fire.

The bridge that Petr fled over

with a passport and a dog

and Zlata with her mother, hand in hand

perhaps a photo tucked into her sleeve

from which already flowed incipient waves

of an eternal noxiousness.

This is the Devil’s Circle

said Vlodymir

you hear the cry, the rasping moan of lost souls

in the gale of radiation

feel the vacant stare of trees that soak

the sun with every breath

of the reactor,

a thousand tumours underground,

suck up the dregs of life

through cankered roots.

In the Devil’s Circle lie

an open violin case

some negatives of a youth

in a bare-chested pose

and, smiling, looking fixedly ahead

into the lens,

a girl.

Don’t touch warned Vlodymir

when

I crouched down like an orphan at its mother’s grave

in the shade of a tree

scattered with forlorn flowers

There, on the ground

lay Marx’s book of wisdom,

a leaflet from the party wing

that manages the plant,

another one that sells the dream

that Lenin dreamt for us,

this one’s in colour.

The mural shows

the women selling fruit

the upturned faces of rust-coloured children

and faces peeled

mere shadows of polluted ghosts

the houses stand wide open

for twenty years they’ve waited

for chairs to be pulled up to the dining table

wardrobes hang open night and day

forgotten,

and water flows in the river

where death bathes, singing

the litany of 40,000 names

that once upon a time witnessed the flames

from the bridge into the village

a cemetary of empty graves

the lost village of Pripjet.

Open ticket

I am a luggage-carrying citizen

from a sun-drenched land

my tongue laps up the dialects

my legs dance with the wind

my eyes have known the women of the street.

Here’s what I carry:

an open ticket, a blank-paged diary

some fragments of remembrance

a passport stamped with faces of peoples that I’ve loved

the winsome smile of yesterday

a guidebook from the story museum.

My island sails along the currents

snuggles against the whir of planes

and lies to rest before me

on the sill of open train windows.

My homeland’s map, redrawn each morning

is a mosaic of empty churches

teeming squares

my eyes tracing the lanes

children eating ices

darkened corners

bastions lit

the sinful places

the wayward’s pit

and time stands still

in my infinite land

drunk with the Pope

the mujaheddin

exhorts the gathering

the muqaddin

who shrug him off

in Harlequin’s name

in this dream of my people

which no clock interrupts

time stands still.

Weaving verses in unending couplets

the spirits’s words conquer the night

a litany of creation sung

at crossroads by the lamps alight.

And my tongue sings the song of beauty

my tongue that’s lapped the sweat of generations

spinning our father’s yarns, the tales

in which the I has its foundations.

Now listen to the bells taking the piss

reminder of the hour in an eternal day

the promise of a drop of quietude

from the incense that invades our throats each day.

Standing on my church’s parvis, I reject

the bibles foisted on me through the years

the gilded tabernacles on the altars

which are locked tight by keys of human fears.

For after all, I tie my faith in rumours

scribbled by angry idiots on the walls

“no”, “I love you”, “no more globalisation”

“can’t live without you here”, “fuck you”, “what balls”.

I walked and walked to find all this

To find there’s nothing there for all the trouble

I finally lay down in my hotel bed

whose owner had assured me was a double.

I know a sun that shines only in the evening

I know a sea that lurks beneath a desert

I know a girl who thrives on soil

I know a black tree in an uncertain night.

I know a boy from Brazil

looking at an airborne plane

to ask

how people could could have found their way up there

I know a Tunisian prisoner

an illegal migrant

I know a Japanese guy who’s bike’s been nicked.

I know a Libian travelling with no passport

who works in a quarry.

I know a girl in Kosovo

who plays the caved-in carcass of a piano.

I know a Palestinian

who visits his son’s grave every day

I know his mother who refuses to speak

I know his friend who was with him that day.

I know a dancer from Catalonia

whose strong legs have mastered

his very shadow

he dances round in circles in the sand

the moon is dancing with him.

This is my land

This is my city

This is the hour

when I carry the wind with me

This is my land

This is my world

This is the story

I carry in my luggage.

Karl Schembri

Translations by Albert Gatt