GRIEF Poem: Not the Sun That Rises, by Justin Fenech

Not the sun that rises
But the sun driven by Ra’s chariots.
Not the hand that caresses
But the smiles that follow.
Not the war from the skies
But playing hide-and-seek in the rubble.

When you bury me
And read my eulogy
Beside my grave
Do no try to find me
In the burning facts of biography
But seek me out
In my reactions to it all.
The being you lay to rest
Resided in a series
Of authentic reactions
To events of happenstance history.

If you dream me with the angels
Dream me a writer of fantasies
Borne from a fantasy-less Hamrun.
If you mourn me alongside Mephisto
Mourn an idler reacting to an age
That obsessively curates idleness.
If in your hot tears glimmers radiant love
It is a love born from generations of workers
Who craved families over Communes.

Our souls are no vacuums
They are put together
Like the mosaics of Byzantine Masters
In the cupolas of Ravenna.
We are constructed of our age,
The accident of birth,
The events of our lives,
And the art – my god –
The art that is
Hurled our way!

Hear the old bombs
And we shatter into being.
Feel the choruses of the gilded masses
And Hallelujah we are remade.

If we are mosaics
We are living ones
Pygmallion’s sculpture
Animated by our ways of reacting
As consistent as stars’ dances
As unique to us
As our genetic code.

We are made by our dances
Dances in and around life
Our being as malleable as limestone
But as fixed as pillars.

After reading my eulogy
And drinking the last
Of my Fernet Branca
Go to the nearest river,
Throw a pebble into a stream
And scatter what’s left of me
In the water flowing
Round the pebble
Retracing its solemn course