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The blood of Malta Is a woman’s sense blunt? A hound could smell it, The blood of Malta rising to my palms, its cells Drawn to hers in a flood of red magnets— The memory humbles me as it returns Like luggage awhile gone astray, Or lightning that seeks the ground Forking the long way home to earth. I heard the thunder call my name. Rise, Malta, it quaked. But I was Australian, then. All because of her skin. I became a monk in that moment, foreswore What I may not have, disinherited myself From my father’s Maltese bequest And refused to hear its rushing howl In case it sprang from the same source As the Rio Napo or shared its fate, with the Marañón, To dance in nature’s mad cascade Into the Atlantic’s oblivious swoon. My first thought was to be bled Like a heart patient, or make a leopard of myself With leeches, or somehow else engage an override Before my dams burst. I was an addict in withdrawal, a turbine Without a driving waterfall. What if this rain should fail? What if the blood of Malta should not rise again? Her soul had the ramparts of Troy, But I did not bloody it with that horse’s subterfuge. Yet I knew the wheel must turn, my engine run, That the true blood of Malta must flow. And thus one holy evening all the villagers’ full-moon lanterns Were revealed to her and her friend (Be a true friend, the blood of Malta sang, Tell her what Malta sings to her). And hidden in that crowd she scorched my shoulder With her palm. The blood of Malta screamed Its way to that one sacred location Which, I soon found, was only her simple link Chaining our small crowd through the larger crowd. But now my body, that Trojan horse, understood Where I should walk to be so burned again, And there I walked. And there all Malta’s ancestral souls Cried out monstrously against my restraint When her link was forged again, now upon my bare arm. “You are mistaken,” I told those souls. “Silence. It means nothing.” Then, in the silence of the fading lanterns, I carefully replaced her at her home Feeling everything except nothing, Feeling the blood of Malta Boil beneath my blistering skin. |
This Poem was Critiqued By: Helen C DOWNEY On Date: 2005-06-03 11:55:47
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 1.00000
Mark,
A truly great write on a historian level.
My favorite line is the first...it sets the scene, making one want to investigate
the remaining evidence as if a mystery.
In the second stanza I am torn between a woman and a volcanoe from many different lands...
Malta, Rio Napo, Maranon...but then with your words; " Without a driving waterfall.What if
this rain should fall?" I am inclined to take the latter.
Powerful lines like;"Her soul had the ramparts of Troy," I feel the rumblings of the volcano
making her prescence known.
I feel Island ceremonies going on as I read; (Be a true friend, the blood of Malta sang,
Tell her what Malta sings to Her).
This is a great historical piece that will shine for eternity.
Helen