Sleep, sleep, my sweet one sleep
Sleep, sleep, my sweet one sleep
Let the film of Morpheus come
Like a veiled mist
And visit your eye-lids
And in the airs around
Invisible a sweet sylph sings
A lulling lullaby.
Sleep, sleep, my sweet one sleep
And woes forget and ills
And wrongs and plots
And treacheries:
Like a veiled mist
Dreams are falling through
Falling
Falling
Falling thro’ your eye-lids thick
With the lead of Morpheus awhile
A sylph doth sing
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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Sweet welcome summer night
Sweet welcome summer night
Brought in the breezes that waft
Across the port of coolness where waves sleep
Lights flicker on Saint Angelo lazily.
The night is dreaming, the night is dreaming.
Far far inward the Bighi lights
Flicker red and white and red predominant
Into the long night
The long and winding night
As in a tunnel of drowsiness
In the long silence that hovers
Over the small cemetery unused.
The night is dreaming, the night is dreaming quite.
The night is leaning, looking over the rails
From the Upper Barracca on the port
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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And In The House
And in the house
All is now silent
I rise and grope
In the dark, dark
And lo! Before me
A blue light I
A thin blue light
See I all a-shining
And leading me
And guiding me
Into the dark
In the long night
In to the long night!
Ah! father, father
Where are
You leading me:
The thin blue light
Now veers to here
And then to there
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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How white and level the plain
How white and level the plain
That stretches to the sea-ridge
The sea-ridge beyond which
The sea roars in and out
And laps against the giant rocks
This night.
I startle - the moon’s light
Which I thought feeble --
Clearly the plain before me lights
And the dark bosom of the sea
Entering and going silver shines
When the moon-rays with the dark waves commix
This night.
No sound save for my steps and the sea’s waves
And here and there a few cool gusts of wind.
No-body save for me - the rest so silent is:
The temples high above in black silhouette
Rise like pointed turrets to the sky
In silent draped and in dress funereal
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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Sleep, Sleep, My Little One
Sleep, sleep, my little one
‘Tis better in this world of us
To sleep the sleep of the innocents
Than sleep the sleep of the just:
At least you’ll have a greater chance
To avoid long knives and plots
And bloody rendezvous.
For in this world, this world of us
The just is alien and his sleep
Most dangerous negligence:
Long knives will wait at corners round
And plots and darts abound
For all the just around.
For in this world, this world of us,
The sleep of innocents is better than
The sleep of all the just, my little one.
Sleep, sleep, my little one
And let outside the dark wind neigh
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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There Is A Justice Below The Heavens
There is a justice below the heavens
That in a way levels every-body
Human with human, and human with non-human:
A justice they used to say that is:
Writ in the heavens; though observed below.
Pope and emperor (of old): king and
President and prime minister;
The grave-digger; the head of department;
The soldier; the cleaner; the free;
The prisoner; what else, what else:
All these are flattened long-term below the heavens
By that unwritten justice.
‘Tis a justice that is not corrupt nor can
Be bribed or bought or prejudiced:
Moving constant as the stars and suns
Ruling without war, or law, or parliaments
It needs not armies;
Yet holds us all and we, and we,
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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They made me suspect
They made me suspect
Suspect that the blue violet
Hides poison in its mystery
And wide-eyed beauty weeping in the glooms
Of dusky eves half-hidden from the day
And in the other half from dark Night kept.
Therefore I
From the blue violet kept away
Admiring from afar
And loving from afar all fearfully.
And thus I left in solitude
The blue violet to the plaintive moon
And to the dewy paces of the dawn
Passing by on the grass from her east cave
And to the wan embraces of the wanton Night
When darkling wavelets lap their way to shore
When nightingales sing their silver melody
At the full distant faces of the startled stars
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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How Yearn I For A Potioned Wine – This Night!
How yearn I for a potioned wine – this night!
How race and run the drops of blood
How race the red, red drops of blood – this night!
How from the face of heaven the clouds
Seem swept away by some full-scathing broom
How smiling the pale moon!
Ah! methinks that the moon, the modest moon
Has in itself somehow sometime infused
The red, red drops of Bacchus – lo in it
The wanness cool is turning to a red
And on its cheek already ruddying goeth:
And merry looks the moon this merry night.
Never would I have thought the moon to be
Votary of Bacchus and his ivied green:
Nor of its conquest by the sweaty arms
Of satyrs fauns and nymphs of Bacchus wild:
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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A Villa With Few Rooms
a villa with few rooms
rustic to the root and core
will I perching over a hill
want where the cool autumn comes to rest itself
and
where the cool autumn comes to rest itself
a fragrance strange abounds hangs all around
the air is wholesome like baking bread
or mutton or pudding:
the heart pumps blood serene
hate flees away invisible
and there is happiness
and
though the cool autumn comes to rest itself
in this agreeable place and home
yet
some-time yearn I too
for a long winter full of drizzling rain
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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Nameless, Formless, Shapeless
Nameless, formless, shapeless
A fog in the brain
A mist in the eyes
Yet in the heart what vulcan flames
From the interior magma rise and leap!
So poetry is born, my poetry
So my lines arise
The genealogy of my lines lies in the fog and mist
And in the leap-flames in the heart!
By spurts, and then after the spurt
An interval of dejection
Fog and mist and blank
And then of sudden
The light shines at the end of a tunnel
The heart-pump leaps
Fanned by the bellows of the interior magma
That rises and leaps, that pumps and leaps!
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poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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