I saw your words etched down in spray paint,

BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS, on a rising pavement

in St. Julian’s Bay  as the sun would start to glisten

on the Valetta streets

and the isle of Comino would soon begin to heave

to the sound of vendors selling deckchairs and the sea would spoil

for a fight.

 

I saw your words and was puzzled by them, not by the words

for even the damaged can understand pain,

but by their placement, their specific duty in  time by unknown hand

who obviously was a person of much discerning taste, not the normal

Kilroy was ‘ere or words of illiterate affection and fulsome in the praise

of destruction, but to outline that even here on my paradise found

the howl of torture could be in earnest sought.

 

I challenged the unseen hand, I raged for a moment,

despite

its ominous beauty

which has held me in embrace since I first learned of its existence

and respected the shuffling beard and stooped down approach,

I raged inwardly, show your hand, the placing of such anguished words

in a place where the sun captures the essence of the soul. I raged,

for all of three seconds, I raged because I had forgotten in one day

that pain exists and its suffers are everywhere.

 

The response to that howl in an unexpected place was such

that my stomach tightened, constricted and stiffened, I had forgotten

that pain exists by sitting in the quietness afforded

to me in the simplicity of island life, I hated myself anew

and wished to hold the painter of realism on concrete canvas

close to me and beg for forgiveness

which was not mine to deserve.

 

My response to seeing your words

in an unexpected place

reminds me that that the

howl is never won, nor wooed, just

misplaced when it suits us.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015