Dreams wrought of Rock

Norbert Ellul-Vincenti, arts critic for the Sunday Times, reviews 'Mill-Blat Insawwar Holma' - a new poetry book by Gorg Borg:

Ah, the fossilized sea-snail opens the conversation with memories that are just memories, and bringing no comfort from their recalling. The sea has beaten the snail inexorably but he has hung on to the rocks for dear life, blowing bubbles of pleasure and steaming with wild desires. That's all his life has been, and even that is gone, leaving behind a fossil of a snail. Is that all there is to life – or is this a prophetic sizing up of the human condition of a poet caught in the act?

Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiastes, vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas or, all life is made of bubbles blowing in the air. As Anne Bronte says in one of her poems, "In all we do, and hear, and see, / Is restless Toil and Vanity; / While yet the rolling earth abides, / Men come and go like Ocean tides; / And ere one generation dies, / Another in its place shall rise."

The arrival of another anthology of poems by Gorg Borg is a notable event, because Borg writes sparsely. Not only do published works come slowly, but even his words come haltingly, as it were, in economy size.

Borg is like his snail, timid and struggling hard against the waves, but he is far from negative or lacking in appreciation. Again and again he returns to the rock-hardness that comes with trial.
In the second poem he is a "little" sea-shell, opening and closing mid the perfumed grasses (presumably the sense of smell works in the water for a shell), and in full view of the young fish milling all round – he is moved by one fish coming close up and setting his heart a-dreaming.
In another place he promises to come back as a sparrow to pierce a pomegranate with his beak and suck it for his pleasure.

He wrestles with the sun, sucking the night dew before the fiery Lord of the Morning takes it all away from him. And he will hang out his washing on the rainbow, hoping that as their wetness dries he will catch sight of the eternal light of God: Ghad xi darba nitla' nonxor/ hwejgi kollha mal-qawsalla/ u kif jinxfu u x-xemx tisreg/ nara d-dawl etern ta' Alla.

It is not only the impossible imagery that strikes, and certainly not any out-of-the-ordinary vocabulary, but it is the right words in the right order, and the musicality of the march of simple foot-infantry, as it were, to their logical goal. Borg is the poet of the reticent, the self-effacing and the down-trodden, but not for that reason, is he lacking in daring dreams. He is soaked in sanguine expectation of a beneficent conclusion to present predicaments. He is not averse to cracking along on all cylinders, sensuously gratifying the senses of sound and sight and touch and taste and smell.

Again and again he is fascinated by the strength of rock and particular by its hardness; a hardness to be cracked; achieved over many years of being acted upon; a hardness to admired; and a hardness to be desired and awaited with enduring patience:

Ic-caghaq biex isir caghaq
jiflah jistenna
u flok ma z-zmien jherrih
isahhu u jqawwih. (Caghaq)

Borg's imagery is constructed more readily on the verbal than the visual. How does one hang one's washing on the rainbow (anymore than on the Siegfried Line)? And how does one go down into an empty well that contains enough material to last a lifetime? Similarly, it is difficult to visualize the poet's "stupid" heart getting away from its anchorage and kneeling at the foot of a running fountain, while washing its hands and face.

The poems about pebbles recall Marjanu Vella, even metrically, and so do a number of poems about walking without returning, or pleading for no questions to be asked before setting out, or walking into the moon or sun:

Ghada ser nitlaq nimxi
F'silenzju kbir, fuqani,
Lejn l-orizzont bajdani.

U meta jroxx id-dlam
U tghib il-hmura
Inkun imbieghed wisq
Biex nerga' lura.

Gorg Borg publishes his own book with a beautiful picture of Rock formation on the cover, by J.P. Borg. Toni Cortis has looked after the fine production.