Alfred Palma

Zabbar, Malta

I was born 8 September 1939 at Floriana, Malta. Single; higher secondary education. Full time author of poetry, novels, radio-plays and short stories. I translated Dante's "Divine Comedy" into Maltese; currently working on the translation of Shakespeare's 38 plays. Winner of many poetry contests both in Malta and abroad; awarded the coveted "Citta di Valletta" prize for my literary achievements. Member of the Society of Maltese Poets and of the Societe Chopin in Paris. I am a very avid reader; also amateur pianist, painter, a great animal lover and a keen rose grower. I hope that the world will suffer poets more and thus suffer less!

Puppets

They rise and fall,
And rise again..
To laugh and cry
In joy or pain,
In summer heat or winter rain!

They fly in dream,
On clockwork wings...
One puppet talks,
Another sings,
While the old Master pulls the strings!

They love and hate,
They kiss and fight...
They spend, they save,
To their delight,
Aware of life through day and night!

Till on the stage,
The Master sore,
Cuts off their strings
In mystic lore,
And they will fall to rise no more!

You

You are the breath that blew upon my ashes,
And kindled in my blood a new sensation
Of life within the meaningless dejection
That caged me in my mind!

You are the god before whose fatal beauty
My foolish heart knelt down in veneration,
Askance and hungry for the warm affection
That it could never find!

You are the fairest rose, and the most thorny,
In the dark garden of my own creation,
Replete with buds that droop with no infection
Of joy, however kind!

You are the breeze that stirred my very being
Into a gale of self-realisation,
That ended my long quest for the perfection
So long I lagged behind!

You are the earthly shadow on my journey
Along the gloomy path of desolation,
That leads into the sun without protection
For eyes already blind!

You are my life's ideal, my affliction,
The very reason of my own damnation,
As Fate declines with obstinate rejection
To free what it doth bind!