A Politician beyond Politics

Oliver Friggieri (1947–2020)

Romilda Pace

Friggieri often explained how an author may not agree with anyone, not even with himself, while the politician has to build everything on consensus. This demonstrates the several candidacy proposals that he turned down, notably Eddie Fenech Adami’s for the elections in 1981 and 1987. Despite his sincere belief that politics is a tool that can be used for good, he had always struggled to comprehend how someone could be a member of a political party that entirely rejects the views of its opponent. As a result, he disregarded such approaches on the advise of his friends Godfrey Grima and Pawlu Mizzi.2

There are other lyrical moments when the political profile is built through historical references, brought for the most part in the form of a politico-intellectual confrontation itself translated into a number of analogies. Friggieri explains how the amendment to the Education Act of 1980, which was considered by many as a dismantling of the Old University, specifically of the Faculties of Arts and Science, ‘showed that in Southern Europe, on the island of Malta, the social living system had only two levels: the level of those who command and the level of those who do not command.’3 Friggieri himself writes how the political violence of the seventies and eighties, encouraged him to write such political poems. He then proceeds by describing a cordial episode between him and Lino Spiteri in which he explains to him that he would like to be a politician beyond politics, like a player who plays outside the ground.4

The connotative load in the poem ‘My Song’5 is inspired by a politicised context in favor of material gain, fostering a society considered indifferent to a poetic idiom that does not yield profit. This should also be considered in the background of a serious and long confrontation between the artist, the academic, or the intellectual on one side and the utilitarianism proposed as a necessary social substitute in Mintoff’s eyes: ‘Now Mintoff seemed to believe that the Maltese intellectuals either didn’t exist, or shouldn’t exist, or should have been silenced.’6 In his autobiography, Friggieri describes a particular episode when he heard Mintoff on television say in Parliament that whoever has nothing to do should write a book.7 It was this remark which motivated Friggieri to write the controversial novel Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri. This is Oliver Friggieri, a poet, a novelist, a literary critic, a philosopher, and a politician beyond politics.

The Disinterred Speaker: Voices from beyond the grave in Friggieri’s poetry

Oliver Friggieri’s verses occasionally include an insubstantial presence that, with a dialectic alternation between attitudes of mourning and consolation, roams within a liminal space between death and life, absence and presence, silence and speech. According to Diana Fuss, when the imagined presence of the deceased is given a voice, the political corpse poem becomes a type of ventriloquism, a manifestation of violence that replaces the human body with a moving political discourse.8 In addition: corpse poems link the literature of ars poetica to the literature of ars moriendi, permitting poets to write as if they were in the grave, as if their voices, at least, survived the ravages of mortality. The speaking corpse belongs to that improbable body of literature one might more properly identify as ars essendi morti, the art of being dead. Ars essendi morti names a powerful oxymoron, since “being dead” annihilates the very possibility of “being” as such.9

Therefore, the animation of the corpse is not a memento mori but becomes the embodiment of death itself, a transformation of the human body that asserts eternal living. The analytical survey of Jean R. Brooks on the relevant poems of Thomas Hardy reveals the renovation of the rhetorical effect of the disintegrated presence, a chiastic consciousness that, in Hardy, yearns not for eternal repose but memory and remembrance.10 Galia

Benziman strengthens this analysis, stating: ‘Hardy’s preoccupation with the dead as the ones who have been wrong, his adoption of their point of view and the agency he grants them by lending them voice have all been cited as evidence of his role as a preserver of memory, a writer who opposes the modern utilitarian tendency to leave the dead behind.’11

Alternating between mystification and demystification of the dead person, the supernatural communication of the speaker reveals the effort of the lyrical sensibility so that, despite his insubstantiality, the enigmatic addressee assumes with prosopopoeia a rhetorically visible, sensible, and comprehensible presence: Attributing consciousness and voice to an inanimate body, these writers irretrievably breach the boundary between the place where language intensifies (the poem) and the place where language vanishes (the corpse). Giving voice to the voiceless cadaver, corpse poems bring language more fully in line with death; they are literary fictions that seek to revivify and reauthorize the dead.12

The very title of the poem ‘Jien Xitla li se Tinbet: IlKelma ta’ Karin’13 testifies to the exchange, or rather, the crossing between the voice derived from nothingness and the poetic process as a justification of an insubstantial and incorporeal presence (Karin) that is being embraced—a ubiquitous sensibility that is echoed in a nostalgic monologue. Above all, ‘being heard tends not only to ensure response but also to enact existence.’14 Deryn ReesJones states that ‘the “I” of the monologue exhibits an overdetermined and objectified selfhood symptomatic of anxieties about claiming any kind of subject position.’15

The anxiety that Karin manifests among all the people in recovering her existence, albeit poetically, is evident throughout the poem. However, the lyrical consciousness, essentially materialised with a voice heard by the whole crowd, immediately starts to defamiliarise with various anthropomorphising and kinesthetic figurations which undergo a progressive metamorphosis with dehumanising metaphors that nevertheless still capture the ephemeral appearance of the lyrical Self:

In political killings, the corpse is intended to function as a sign—a message (and most often a warning) to the living Political corpses are killed simply to make a point; deprived of subjective voice, these corpses do not so much convey a political message as become the message … By giving voice to the cadaver, political corpse poems belatedly seek to undo this semiotic violence by multiplying the ways in which the dead body might signify and by complicating the terms of both its utterance and its address. These poems ventriloquize corpses not to perpetrate another kind of profanation upon the dead but to manifest the violence of turning any physical body into a form of political speech.16

The amalgamation of the metaphorical components and the ontological unfolding of the enigmatic presence materialise in a series of analogical images that collectively belong to a hybrid and disintegrated consciousness, an anachronistic existence that is constantly dismantled and rebuilt. The subjectivity of this soul becomes divisible even in its spectral form, as manifested with the repetitive use of the verb ‘kont’, 17 which serves as an evocation of the lost past in a lyrical consciousness that affirms its disintegration with a number of memories that are also captured in the dehumanising transformation of the deceased, such as into a ‘rose’18 and a ‘daisy.’19 After all, as Fuss claims, ‘corpse poems, unlike elegies, strive to reconstitute death, not to compensate for it. The corpse poem is not a substitute for loss but a vehicle for it, not a restitution for loss but a means to achieve it.’20 In addition to rendering the dead body superficial visibility, the floral representation also suggests fertility, innocence, and purity, qualities which are even amplified by the distilled drops of the ‘dew’:21

Kont warda tleqq bin-nida li tbusni tul il-lej’, kont margerita mbexxqa tistenna l-jum li ġej.22

The gesture of the moist kiss and the organic immaturity of the partially-opened flower23 that wishes to face the future imply tender proximity, delicate sensibility, the initiation of existence, and hope for living. The transfiguration of the dehumanised speaker extends with a continuous intervention of alternative substitutes, analogical images that serve momentarily as compensation for the insubstantiality of the poetic Self.24 However, with a volta between the seventh and eighth stanza, the invisibility of the present Self involves an incongruent perception, an antithetical procedure that contributes to the double denial of the Self: the disintegration of the Self from a temporal (with premature defeats that ended life when it had barely begun) and a spectral (because the continuous projection of the speakers in a series of appearances makes each one of them insubstantial) perspective.

The erratic corporeality and the disintegration of Karin’s ingenuity are suggested by susceptible but expressive figurations25—the ‘lamp’ and the ‘candle’ that go out with a breeze, the ‘symphony’ that flutters at the slightest sound, the fragility of the ‘statue,’ the ‘star’ which fades behind clouds, and the puniness of the ‘lark’ which renders it an accommodating prey for the predator— imply the urgent need of a political system that does not destroy, does not break, does not fragment, does not threaten, and does not endanger the existence of citizens. It calls for a reform of the political figure that strives for a more tolerant, open, and protective democratic leadership towards those who have no intrinsic defense. Effectively, these lyrical effects translate into an adolescent and gentle condemnation of the national consciousness perenially veering towards a violent political ideology, even if this happens with indelible remorse.

The metamorphic links of ‘Jien Xitla li se Tinbet: Il-kelma ta’ Karin’,26 pursue other alterations of the lyrical I, a transitory continuation followed by more dehumanising figurations,27 sometimes concretistic and other times synesthetic, but all condensed into one persistent motif: the loss of the Self emphasised by the displacement of human corporeality into metaphorical entities which evoke an abstract but urgent value. At a particular point in this metaphorical expedition, the perpetual deconstruction of the Self comes to an end with the embodiment of the ‘girl swimming in ponds,’28 a corporeal image that shortly disintegrates again with her immediate metamorphosis into ‘a drop in the oceans / of undulating waves.’29

As much as the relatively insignificant ‘drop’ in the sublimity of the aquatic force corresponds to the healing sacrifice of the Self (Jien għada biex ilbieraħ / ma jerġa’ jiġi qatt30), it also contrasts with the dynamic vitality of the past voice given future aspiration (jien l-għodwa talġejjieni / li riesaq fuq kulħadd 31) with liberal prospects. The representative sensibility of the victim finds its culmination at the end of the composition when, ironically, Karin bears the responsibility of the atrocity committed on her while covering the regenerative spirit much needed by the whole nation recognised as a collective soul:

Jien leħen li se jiżen għal dejjem dan id-dnub, jien xitla li se tinbet f’rebbiegħa ġewwa l-qlub.32

Both the organic process of budding (germination) and the introduction of the seasonal element weave a single pattern made of many prospective threads: (i) the respect for a promising adolescence, (ii) the resurgence of a new empathic sensibility, (iii) the renewal of a political consciousness that prioritises the individual, and (iv) the regeneration of a national consciousness that is not indifferent to the sufferings of others. It is, above all, a voice that, with its death, attained the possibility of entering into the ‘hearts’33 of two tribes that were not allowed to grow into a single nation, a divisive mentality that led directly to the sin of indifference towards the other party.

The supernatural vision exhibited by the intervention of atemporal and elusive presences also takes precedence in the poem ‘Karin u Raymond.’34 From the beginning of the composition, the crepuscularity and obscurity typically associated with the spectral realm are overcome by a seraphic, idyllic, cosmological, and transcendental perception—a utopian and cathartic scene of a bride and a bridegroom (għarajjes) roaming in a locus amoenus like Adam and Eve in Eden. In her thesis ‘Il-Varjetà ta’ Vuċijiet fil-Lirika ta’ Simone Galea’,35 Maria Vella writes that ‘the surreal characters . . . are used as symbolisms for the thoughts, desires, and reflections contained in the poet’s subconscious.’36 The tactile sensation of the clasped hands and the fictitious and eternal matrimonial bond between the lovers suggest the corporeal reshaping of the dead and the evocation of communion, intimacy, and ‘the desired union between the parties they represent.’37 In fact, Wayne Farrugia writes that ‘the rite of marriage which entails uniting the bodies and hearts and drinking from the same chalice, serves to reconcile the parties and entice them to drink from the same chalice around the same table as one Catholic nation’38:

Id f’id għarajjes bojod li nittajru fi żwieġ li ma jixjieħx matul iż-żmien, żewġ kwiekeb li nittawlu kull flgħaxija u ngħassu fuqkom dejjem, kullimkien.39

The anthropomorphised perception of the celestial bodies,40 with their connotations of eternity and permanence, recognises the parental protective instinct, tender gaze, and perpetual surveillance of ‘guards who never ever sleep,’41 two figures who, despite the distance of the cosmic interaction between them, assume the national protection expected from politicians. This motif persists in the third stanza with the anaphoric extension of the agent noun ‘għassiesa’42 pictured in a border that brings together hints of a panorama and a suggestion of altruistic suicide,43 and in the penultimate stanza with the invocation of two synergistic guardians or stonemasons who sculpt the ‘rock’44 (synecdoche of Malta) into a ‘new nation.’45

The irrevocable disconnection of the lyrical speakers from the temporality of the human world extends into a ‘white dream,’46 an oneiric dimension that, as much as it testifies to a fundamental human capacity, intensifies the euphemism of eternal sleep which acts as an idiom that alleviates the definiteness of death, a state which, while it is a withdrawal from the real scope, still releases a sense of relief and revival. Without excluding sacrifice and the spectral whiteness that neutralises the iconic shades of the parties (hemm ħolma li m’hix blù w anqas m’hi ħamra47), the perpetual monochromatic scheme implied in the whitish dream ‘which no colour will ever spoil’,48 symbolically evokes innocence, purity, and virginity within the imaginary

‘marriage’,49 an ephemeral but still an effective image of love which ‘changed sorrow into marriage.’50

The introduction of the religious element51 as a facultative and anesthetic agent that obliterates momentarily ‘every pain, every memory, every lament’52 extends into a Greek mythological context of the pagan god Eros evoked by the metaphor of the ‘arrow’,53 which figuratively reveals the frustrated longing of the lyrical speakers for the ‘love’54 that breaks through ‘in every house, in every street, in every alley, [and] in every parliament.’55 This human sentiment is not only understood as an emotional trial but starts to be perceived as an insistent memory (emphasised by the anaphora ‘imħabba’56) for communion and unification: Bl-imħabba jħabbtu qlubna taħbit wieħed, / l-imħabba li żewġitna hawn fuq it-tnejn 57 The alliteration of the consonant /b/ evokes, above all, the rhythmic competence of the living body: the heartbeat that, ironically, is beating in the dead body—the immortality of the ubiquitous soul instilled in the human conscience stained with the politicians’ sins.

The allusive compromise that Friggieri develops in other poems between the politicians generates a perpetual contradiction that exhibits the purity and transparency which he admired and cherished deeply in the religious figure, in a confrontation with the abuses and corruption of the political figure. Therefore, the interpretation leans towards a socially harmonious and fundamentally human environment in its religious sensibility—which fades the colours into one empathetic emotion, and the same national environment fragmented into contrasting and conflicting hues in the political contexts. In his other literary works, for example, Fil-gżira Taparsi jikbru l-Fjuri, and Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri, Friggieri also alludes to the humanitarian shortcomings and the moral mediocrity of political manifestos through politico-religious manifestos which are based upon empathy with the weak.

The alternation between death and the animation of the corpse extends in the poem ‘Werqa fl-Album ta’ Raymond,’58 a lyric that testifies to its power not only by the vivid projection of the dehumanisation and radical disintegration of the victim but also with the simultaneous ability to resurrect the dead with the agency of the voice. The metaphorical gap between the sentient body and the corpse is mitigated through a retrospective address affirmed by the nostalgic intensity in the fictitious and traumatised voice of the deceased that is framing and modifying the homicidal narrative carried out on itself:

Sittax-il tir, sparajthom dritt għal fuqi, sittax-il tir u wieħed kien biżżejjed biex demmi ħareġ kollu f’tapit aħmar u wqajt bħal xitla ténera f’rebbiegħa.59

Here, the topos of suffering is strengthened by the anaphoric emphasis on the moment of the gunshot60 and by the hyperbolic description of a drained corporeality, a hemorrhage that substantiates the brutal political assassination. This image immediately translates into a simile that, with the suggestion of an inversion of the agricultural cycle, creates a parallelism between the ‘tender plant’61 that ironically withered during the flowering period, and Raymond’s corporeal decay after his premature death. This sense of death continues to gain seasonal prevalence in the subsequent verses, ‘Your winter must pass, and bring with it / a season in which you too rejoice with me’,62 where the annual proceeding is loaded with a wintry context, connoting another spiritual death: that of the politician addressed by the deceased composed and at rest.

In another poem, ‘Minn Fuq il-Golgota Tiegħi: Ilkelma ta’ Raymond,’63 the persona reappears in a spectral dimension which, with the realistic effect of animation, is given a corporeally palpable posture: the exhumation of the corpse from the gothic realm of the tomb. The horizontal position of the dead body, ‘lying’64 in the ‘coffin,’65 is alleviated by the euphemistic technique of the pathetic fallacy of a dark atmosphere generated by the perennial depth of the last sleep66 which lyrically ‘permits the presence of life in the absence of the conscious.’67 f’dil-ħemda li traqqadni fin-ngħas tal-itwal lej’, mimdud kif jien biex nara minn fuqi s-sħab għaddej.68

The corporeal passivity of the victim, the obscurity intensified by the sublimity of absolute silence (ħemda69) and of the night, and the implied claustrophobic, dark, and humid space of the tomb contrast with the breath vapour as a somniferous or sedative substance that calms and puts you to sleep.’70 The evocation of bodily relief in a utopian atmosphere extends to the sixth stanza with other innocuous natural elements,71 which figuratively assume a relationship between the perceptible body of the murdered and the nature endowed with anthropomorphic and beautiful qualities, a prospective and benevolent behaviour which, as much as it alleviates the atrocity committed on him, stimulates in him a new perceptive ability and corporeal realisation: għajnejja nfetħu beraħ, u qalbi ma waqfitx, il-polz baqagħli jħabbat u ruħi ma striħitx.72

In this reincarnation of the dead body, actuated by the ocular movement and the coronary circularity, there is an implication of a tormented soul73 that needs to obtain a human corporeal existence for itself in order to redeem the following generation. Two consecutive rhetorical questions even suggest this reincarnation which as much as they incarnate the mysterious dead, with the recovery of the voice and the evocation of corporeality they affirm the anxious and lonely mood, the need for dialogue, and the perennial longing of a lost soul that wishes to be found and resurrected: M’intomx tarawni nfittex / lil ħbiebi b’dawn l-għajnejn? / M’intomx tħossuni nteftef / filfolla b’dawn l-idejn?74

The sense of a vulnerable and ubiquitous presence intensifies in the subsequent stanza when, with the same form of disproportionate interaction, the exasperated voice suggests with certainty and with a sardonic tone familiarity with the entities addressed (the indifferent politicians, the insensitive killers, and the docile and senseless nation) which, ironically, translate into vehicles that have led to the organised homicide, to a ‘horrifying sight.’75 As much as the progress from the corporeal summons,76 to the recognition of the ‘face,’77 and then to the acoustic perception of the occasionally articulated78 oral expression79 animates the dead, it also generates a mysterious and cynical climate that includes a sense of exhaustion, fatigue, and regret. The anaphorical adverb ‘hemm’,80 used between the eighteenth and twentieth stanza and followed by a combination of anthropomorphised figures that create81 or eradicate82 every hint of hope, contextualises the schizophrenic state of the corpse swaying perpetually between optimism and exasperation:

Hemm xewqa li tbikkimkom, hemm dehra tat-tkexkix, hemm lejl li qatt ma sebaħ, hemm jiena li m’iniex.83

Within this poetic moment, the transposition of the speaker from an insubstantial presence into a passive observer who offers a panoramic view of his own brutal death84 is captured by the obscure and interminable sublimity of the stillness of ‘night’,85 and from the final oxymoronic phrase which with ambivalence creates an alternation between presence and absence, between corporeal and insubstantial consciousness, between the self and the non-self.

Romilda Pace graduated from the University of Malta with a Bachelor’s Degree (Hons) in Maltese. In her thesis, ‘Il-Figura Politika fil-Lirika ta’ Oliver Friggieri’, she researched the poetic technique of Oliver Friggieri and analysed three literary mechanisms with which Friggieri shapes the profile of the Maltese politician, and how he created a dialectic between the discourse of a poet who assumes the role of national consciousness. She is currently reading for a Masters in Teaching and Learning in Maltese at the University of Malta.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to Prof. Bernard Micallef for his inspiring guidance, valuable suggestions, and constant encouragement. It is also my bounden duty to express my warmest and heartfelt thanks to Dr Immanuel Mifsud for recommending my research to Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. Lastly, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Ms Sephora Francalanza for proofreading the translated literary verses.

Notes

1 Oliver Friggieri, Fjuri li ma Jinxfux (Malta: Klabb Kotba Maltin, 2018), 654.

2 Ibid., 592-593.

3 Ibid., 606.

4 Ibid., 609.

5 ‘L-Għanja Tiegħi’, in Oliver Friggieri, Il-Poeżiji Miġbura (Malta: Mireva Publications, 2002), 5.

6 Friggieri (2018),642.

7 Ibid., 642-643.

8 Diana Fuss, ‘Corpse Poem’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 30 No. 1 (2003), 16.

9 Ibid., 2.

10 Jean R. Brooks, Thomas Hardy: The Poetic Structure (New York: Cornell University Press, 1971), 133.

11 Galia Benziman, Thomas Hardy’s Elegiac Prose and Poetry: Codes of Bereavement (London: Macmillian Publishers, 2018), 63.

12 Erik R. Seeman, Speaking with the Dead in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 131.

13 ‘I am a Plant that will Sprout: Karin’s Word’, in Friggieri (2002), 190-193.

14 Michael S. Macovski, Dialogue and Literature: Apostrophe, Auditors, and the Collapse of Romantic Discours (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 31.

15 Deryn Rees-Jones, Carol Ann Duffy (United Kingdom: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1999), 17.

16 Fuss, ‘Corpse Poem’, 16.

17 ‘I was’.

18 warda

19 margerita.

20 Fuss (2003), 25.

21 nida

22 ‘I was a rose glistening with dew / kissing me during the night, / I was a daisy only just blooming / awaiting the approaching day.’ All translations are mine, with proofreading by Ms Sephora Francalanza.

23 margerita mbexxqa (‘a daisy only just blooming’).

24 bilbla (‘lark’), xemgħa (‘candle’), musbieħ (‘lamp’), simfonija (‘symphony’), statwa (‘statue’), poeżija (‘poem’), kewkba (‘star’), bewsa (‘kiss’), ġamra (‘ember’).

25 See previous note.

26 ‘I am a Plant that will Sprout: Karin’s Word’, in Friggieri (2002), 190-193.

27 lanterna tħeġġeġ (‘a glistening lantern’), kantiku li jitlob (‘a canticle that prays’), kelma ttir (‘a flying word’).

28 tfajla tgħum fl-għadajjar.

29 qatra fl-oceani / ta’ mewġ li ma jbattix

30 ‘I am tomorrow so that yesterday / will never come again’.

31 ‘I am the morning of the future / approaching upon everyone’.

32 ‘I am a voice that will weigh / forever this sin, / I am a plant that will sprout / in a spring within hearts’.

33 qlub.

34 ‘Karin and Raymond’, in Friggieri (2002), 193-194.

35 ‘The Variety of Voices in Simone Galea’s Lyric’.

36 ‘il-karattri surreali . . . jintużaw bħala simboliżmi għall-ħsibijiet, ix-xewqat, u r-riflessjonijiet li jinsabu fis-subkonxju tal-poeta’. See Maria Vella, ‘Il-Varjetà tal-Vuċijiet fil-Lirika ta’ Simone Galea’ (BA dissertation; Malta: University of Malta, 2013), 51.

37 ‘l-għaqda mixtieqa bejn il-partiti li jirrappreżentaw.’ See David Aloisio, Noti mal-Fanal: Studju Kritiku dwar 20 poeżija minn Mal-fanal hemm ħarstek tixgħel (Malta: Merlin Publishers, 2020), 68.

38 ‘ir-rit taż-żwieġ li jitlob it-twaħħid tal-ġisem u l-qlub flimkien u x-xorb mill-istess kalċi, jiġi applikat għat-tressiq mill-ġdid tal-partiti lejn xulxin bil-għan li jixorbu mill-istess kalċi madwar l-istess mejda bħala poplu wieħed Kattoliku.’ See Wayne Farrugia, ‘Il-Kostruzzjoni tan-Nazzjon fil-Poeżija ta’ Oliver Friggieri’ (MA dissertation; Malta: University of Malta, 2021), 105.

39 ‘Hand in hand we are bride and bridegroom who fly / in a marriage ageless through time, / two stars that peek every evening / and watch over you always, everywhere.’

40 Kwiekeb (‘stars’).

41 għassiesa li ma [. . . j]orqdu qatt u qatt

42 ‘guards’.

43 għassiesa biex id-demm li xerridn’ aħna / ma jerġa’ jxerrdu ħadd u ħadd u ħadd (‘guards who ensure the blood we shed / will be shed by no one, no one, no one ever again’).

44 blata

45 nazzjon ġdid

46 ħolma bajda

47 ‘there is a dream that is neither blue nor red’.

48 li ma jħassarha b’xejn ebda kulur

49 żwieġ

50 fi żwieġ biddlet dulur

51 Salm (‘psalm’).

52 kull weġgħa, kull tifkira, kull lament.

53 vleġġa

54 imħabba

55 f’kull dar, f’kull triq, f’kull sqaq, f’kull parlament

56 ‘love’.

57 ‘With love our hearts beat as one, / the love that united us both here above’.

58 ‘A Leaf in Raymond’s Album’, in Friggieri (2002), 195.

59 Sittax-il tir: ‘Sixteen shots, you fired them straight at me, / sixteen shots and one was enough / for all my blood to spill into a red carpet, / and I fell like a tender plan in spring.’

60 ‘sixteen shots’.

61 xitla tenera

62 Trid tgħaddi x-xitwa tiegħek, u ġġib magħha / staġun li bih ukoll int tifraħ miegħi.

63 ‘From Above my Golgotha: Raymond’s word’, in Friggieri (2002), 185-188.

64 mimdud.

65 tebut.

66 tal-itwal lej’ (‘of the longest night’).

67 ‘[. . . t]ippermetti l-preżenza tal-ħajja fl-assenza tal-konxju’. Marja Piccinino, ‘Forom ta’ Indirizz Poetiku fil-Poeżija ta’ Oliver Friggieri’ (B.A. dissertation; Malta: University of Malta, 2012), 49.

68 ‘in this stillness which puts me to sleep, in the sleepiness of the longest night / lying as I am to see / the clouds passing above me.’

69 ‘stillness’.

70 Martin Litchfield West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 387.

71 iċ-ċipress (‘the cypress’), l-għasafar (‘the birds’).

72 ‘my eyes opened wide, / and my heart did not stop, / my pulse kept beating / and my soul did not rest.’

73 ruħi ma striħitx (‘my soul did not rest’).

74 ‘Don’t you see me looking / for my friends with these eyes? / Don’t you feel me touching / the crowd with these hands?’

75 dehra tat-tkexkix

76 mixja (‘walk’).

77 wiċċ.

78 leħen (‘voice’).

79 daħk (‘laughter’).

80 ‘there is’.

81 fjur (‘flowers’); ħolma (‘dream’), għada (‘tomorrow’), xemx (‘sun’).

82 Ġebla tnixxi d-demm, ‘a stone oozing blood’.

83 ‘There is a wish which upsets you, / there is a horrifying sight, / there is a night that never dawned, / there is me who I am not.’

84 tat-tkexkix (‘horrifying’).

85 lejl.