A poem by Antoine Cassar
Collage by the IotL Magazine
Bonġu, alarm clock, thanks,
might as well slide out of bed,
rinse the night from my mouth,
cast my net to the morning,
will hope turn a corner
and startle me today, at any time?
¿Qué está pasando en Chile?
Are they still sharing merciful
comedy memes
of that orange-faced fool?
How many adverts
will colonise my subconscious
on the way to work?
Any little spark of opposition
on our forsaken island,
where the drummer of
“Malta Not for Sale”
now follows a businessman like a poodle
down the aisles of a supermarket?
Will the Mediterranean be visible today
from the hills of Jenin?
Alarm clock, do not despise me,
should I press snooze a seventh time
forcing you to scream once more
into the late, late darkness…
For another five minutes, I beg you,
leave me to go on dreaming of a sea
as blue as blue used to be.
Antoine Cassar is a poet, translator, map freak, and peddler of universal passports. Raised between East London, Qrendi and Madrid, though he tends to feel more at home within the pages of an atlas. Erbgħin Jum (Forty Days, EDE), a book-length poem on domestic violence, childhood trauma and walking as self-therapy, was awarded the National Book Prize in 2018.
