Written piece
Aubade
Norbert Bugeja
Malta
About this piece
This poem captures a moment of departure – one that is situated in both mythical space and political time. Its delicate mode of address threads together the echoes of migrant lives lost at sea, of Mediterranean mythology, as well as the author’s own experience of profound loss.
Aubade
You lent me the azure blue of this moment, and I swore
one day I would return this verse to the sea – a silence
splashing gently among the slender pillars
of your fingers. Letter by letter, the dawn rests
upon the sparse, quick words through which
we steered the long boat of our exile.
Bend your legs – there. Forget your eyes.
Leave, just go. As the sun rises you will feel
this wave surge from your slumber and pour
into you the mournful ink of your country
before it dries up. Go now, for in that instant
after the wound and just before the pain
one of your sandals will slip into the water. Let it be –
let me roll up the hems of this dawn
and dip my feet into you, until you awaken.
[Written by Norbert Bugeja. Translated from the Maltese by Irene Mangion]