Abandonment - I Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

To laze a little in the
Afternoon

To be a nightingale
And sing the night

To be a lizard
And in night's secrecy
Clutter around and
The walls climb.

To laze a little in
The fading sunset

To look at wood-trees in
A pining dusk

To have red cheeks a-fading
As the dusk

To float face upwards in
The starry night

To be a frog and sigh
In the nocturnal mud of
Desolate ponds.

To be, to be….

Sweet, sweet abandonment
In a rosy wood..

Sweet, sweet amidst the
Twinkling briers

To reap the beauty of a
Night's awakening

To clutch a moment
In the rise of dawn

To do, to do….

To see a satyr
In the deep of night
And seeing me
See him leap
Into the waters and
Make circles round
On the waters' breasts
Without a sound….

Circle after circle…

To be a nymph in a
Grecian land
To swim
To swim
Up the Aegean
Near the shore
Where the waves spume
Against first rocks of old..


To be on a lea where
First the Earth is born from
The retiring sea-masses:
And the first grass spouts
To mix its scent with
The salt of the sea
In some Grecian shore and
Earth it must be
It must be….

To be an eagle soaring
Over Earth ah! in perpetual
Flight above the earth
And moving dinosaurs
Lush trees and tall
And vegetation green
To be, to be, to be…

To peer amidst the
Reeds of wakening Spring
Hear birds pipe and
In the heavens
Flutter high with joy
Alas!
That draws heartfelt sighs!
Alas! alas!

So many joys there be
In abandonment
So many, so many!
Alas! alas!
They be around us
And they be for free
To all, no riches needed
Yet we ignore, yet we ignore…

And then
And then to dream
To hear waters incandescent
Slip down the fateful
Rocks and the boughs bend
Over the noisy waters
They prefer, these boughs
A silence where to dream
Of Saturn overthrown by
Jove to reign fugitive over
Old stalwarts; to view
As in a bead flowers diverse
Colors diverse in a bead
Line the banks of small streams
Beyond the hill as you go
Up the dust from it
Lies to your heart
Your tongue in thirst
In agony of thirst
And sweat but still
You trudge and trudge
That's life
And then
And then
To dream
To have more moments of abandonment
To close first verses as
The dusk begins to rattle
Day towards the night
And fires swarthy the stars' light
Here end I my sweet abandonment
The first of more I will to come
And flourish for my heart's content
To come, to come…