Malta in Winter
Ochre rocks,
Dun-coloured, sun-soaked, smooth,
But strangely pitted, as though wept on over centuries
By angels’ tears.
Squat buildings,
That would be squalid as any inner city’s,
Were the romantic aura exorcised.
Their stones soak up the sun,
Bleached by it, bathed in it,
Secretively benign.
How strange
To sit by seats edge and not hear
The cry of gulls!
The towering cliffs of Gozo hold no nest,
No twitterings break my early morning’s rest,
For in this paradise there is no bird.
Instead, the cries of children,
Sloe-eyed, doe-eyed, Arab-dark,
With here and there a fairer skin,
Recalling British rule,
And honks of buses,
Bull-nosed Leyland relics,
Reminders, too, of the Imperial past,
And just as old.
Do they run all night
Along their determined mid-road track?
The sameness palls.
One longs for England. Even her fogs,
Dark drizzle, piled-up snow, all winter’s bite,
Herald the Epiphany of Spring’s delight.
Page(s) 9
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The