Simone Iguanez

Oil on Canvas

24" X 18"
...
'I left' Poetry Simone Iguanez.
(Translated from the Maltese by Maria Grech Granado)


I left my country and too much behind me
– I cannot die

there are streets i have wandered
songs i have sung
newly-cut flowers, which i left
and a coffee that’s cooling and crushed papers by
crumbs of close by a past which no longer is, though it lingers
– in crumbs
there are yellowing books and candles, candles dripping
and rain about to pour and sun behind clouds
and waves ironed out into calmness
rocks and gravel and sand
there are reeds which creak and an orphaned seagull
there are temples and empty spaces, shivering
my mother and father growing wrinkled and old and bent
my siblings giving birth to me in new blood, silent
sheets pulled back and open roof-doors
and now night has fallen and dewdrops on my door
and the tides of grains
blowing and growing, fruit on the branches
at the end of the alley a cat and a dog which is barking

there is you, flirting away
sms – i hear you laughing from here
sometimes i feel you trembling