New World.
In my late teens I returned to Malta, thoroughly American. I arrived in Valletta and walked to Marsa to visit my beloved Auntie Lena. On the way, I saw several carriages--"karrozzini"--whose drivers asked me if I wanted to hire them, for a lift. But now, a money-conscious American abroad, I assumed that they would be as expensive as the buggies in Central Park. I said "no" again and again, and drivers seemed hurt, as if I should have known better.
Then I returned home, to the States, to my father wanting to hear all my vignettes. I told him about my visits with Auntie Lena, his sister, about Gozo, about all my cousins, nieces and nephews. Finally, I told him about the horse-drawn carriages and how much I wanted to ride in them, but didn't.
He gave me a look, as if he were about to faint from disgust, and told me that those drivers were trying to compete with taxicabs, were trying to feed their families and horses, were trying to preserve a way of life ... and that they only charged a few shillings.
It was his look, haunted me. I had become American in his eyes, had somehow lost my Mediterranean roots. To prove him wrong, I went to my bedroom and wrote the following poem:
THE ENDANGERED HORSEMAN
Valletta
Not the horse, but the man
becomes extinct. He simply cannot move
from here to there
quick enough in his Arabian-drawn carriage.
In his frayed tuxedo, he remembers
the balls at the Hotel Britannia, the duke
he drove to the docks--how they sang
the old songs and wept
for Her Majesty's fleet,
forsaken for lack of sterling.
Everyone must pay. It seems
a government motto: freedom,
he thinks, has arrived
too quickly. The streets snarl
with Fiats, double-deck buses, airport vans;
they surround the Arabian
who adapts to the gait of traffic,
is as proud as in the ring,
muscles slick with sweat and petrol-vapor.
The horseman, broke,
mumbles "Taxi, Sir?"
to unimpressed Libyan businessmen,
heads at dusk to terraced pastures,
grazes the Arabian amid gulls
honking like harried drivers, and sleeps
deep inside his circus wagon
decaying in siroccos.
It was 1972. Malta was indepedent, and I trying to become so. To this day, I feel a tinge of guilt for not having ridden in one of those carriages. But my father was impressed with the poem and forgave me. I had captured the driver's point of view and with it, a remnant of my own culture.
All this talk about sports celebrities on the news! It reminds me when I visited Marsa in the 1970s. I was not quite twenty. My uncle Anthony Bugeja took me to a corner social club and showed me a picture of my father, Michael Carl Bugeja, who was a local soccer star. When he emigrated to America, before I was born, my dad actually played for the Detroit "Lakers" in a semi-pro league in the States. I remember looking at his picture with the all-Maltese team. He was so slim and athletic. I, on the other hand, resembled my mother's side of the family. Soft, near-sighted. Book worm. But I always tried to please my father because he was more than a local hero, he was *my* hero. Years after visiting the social club, I wrote this poem, trying to capture what my father had bequeathed to me: THE PROFESSIONAL My father, at fifty, used to sashay by soccer practice As if, strange enough, on errand in a meadow, And dally till one of us dribbled out of bounds. Then like a hornet out of honeycomb, he'd zip by The forwards, the guards--all of them falling For his fake--and at last toward me, goalkeeper, Too slow for the field. At first, I would duck. I had seen too many clips--players carted unconscious, Laid out like checkerboard--thwack, between the eyes. It became a matter of manhood, and I caught a few On the ear, nose, and chin. Then I turned Martyr, pain as reward. So he reared back and shot For the corners: I'd go right, bellyflopping in the dirt, And the ball of course would sail left. It was his way To toughen me for the league: my goal. Some of us Took heart, hurled bodies at his feet, fouled, Got faster, and corralled him like a herd Before the kick. I, on the other hand, became A poet. He didn't complain or coax me back to the field, Where I'd stroll within earshot, ready to drop Pen and pad and run to him, punishing him To this day. I teach now and take my shots-- Thwack, a line break here, thwack, a dangler there-- My way to drill would-be writers who bellyache, Cry foul, or corral me. But they don't quit As I did in that meadow, if they want it Bad enough. And they do, by God, they do.E-mail to Dr Bugeja