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NAME: Maria Grech Ganado
BORN: 1943
If Plato was right about mimesis, then the prototypes of a baby girl who was forcepped into World War 2 (1943) were Peter Pan and Alice. My very Catholic parents got engaged after 12 yrs of courting, waited a further 4 before getting married, and finally another 7 before having me, their first child! Moreover, like my prototypes, I was purely fictional, pretending to go through 3 Universities (Malta, Cambridge, Heidelberg), lecture in English literature at the 1st one, marry, have three children (the 2nd 2 being a horror story because of the 1st one), separate. Having realized my Self was only a reflection in the �real� world, and that it existed more substantially in the reflections of others (especially the Metaphysical poets, Keats, Emily Bronte, Browning�s dramatic monologues, T S Eliot, Yeats and Fowles), I started to wonder if the reflections of a reflection would seem substantial to others. I�d have loved to write novels, but seem to prefer flying than feeling 16 in a 60 yr. old body for too long. I day dream a lot � my sunsign is Pisces � I love all shades from lilac to violet � and own about 17 witches strategically placed round the flat in which I live alone, to ward off the commonplace. My greatest vice is an uncontrollable inability to retain anger � my greatest virtue the propensity to see everything as absurd (including the word �propensity� which needs a proper diet). Maria's first collection of English poetry, 'Ribcage' was published in Malta in 2003.
6 THINGS THAT IRRITATE MARIA MOST
1. Symmetry
2. Posting snail-mail letters
3. The name, Demosthenes
4. Politeness without courtesy
5. Limp handshakes
6. Being patted on the back when I'm hugging someone
MARIA'S LINKS
Visit Maria's homepage and read a selection of her reviews here
Read about Maria's publications in Maltese and forthcoming collection of English poetry here
Visit Inizjamed, Maltese cultural site for forthcoming reading events in Malta here
Visit the official website of Maltese writer, Immanuel Mifsud here
Visit ArtMagick decadent pre-Raphaelite site for contagious pre-age-of-reason-suckers, contaminated by the likes of Keats and Tennyson here
Visit the official Oxfam website and find out how you can helphere
DISCLAIMER - Some images used in ths site have been sent to me to use. If there is anything from your own site and you have not given consent, then please email me and I will gladly give you credit or remove the images from the site. No violation of copyright is intended
If you walk along corridors too long, you must
use crutches � you must forget which doorway
opens on space. You must forget that doorways
open. When you reach out, if you find hands
to hold you, you must forget that they�re attached
to those who recreate you in their image, who feed
you knowledge of their knowledge of what�s best.
Should you remember how once in a blue space
you whirled around, head thrown far back,
to drink the sky � forget it. Your arms stretched
out, the sky showed through your fingers
and if another hand met yours, it was in dance.
You knew no borders then, no intersections,
and when you breathed, you mind was clear
for the air to flow through. The architecture of empty
space was freedom. But, you must forget.
The time has come when you must trace the scars
which cross your body like patches of sewn leather �
once your flesh, now just a metaphor for spirit.
You�re only a cracked canvas for the sketches
of hands around you, a scroll for the religious,
a parchment where cartographers chart their maps.
MEN WHO ARE NOT LOVERS
I love the love of men who are not lovers.
I love resting my head against their chest, my fists
under my chin, their arms, though slightly gawky,
shielding me muffled, pulling me in.
I love the warmth of men who won�t go hot,
Their shoulders broad enough to bear my head
after the sobbing stops, who sit clasping my hand
in both of theirs to calm me, not asking what it was
that had upset me, wondering perhaps, if lovers
had ever cried like this because of them.
A man who loves, but never like a lover, will ask
for your opinion, want to talk, and perhaps best of all,
pull out the boy in him and make you laugh till you forget
you�ve cried. With such a man you are a girl again, you�re fun
you�re colour, you�re a wide open space under the sky.
I love the love of men who are not lovers,
it doesn�t say goodbye.
ARENA
You won�t remember me. I used to be
someone who made a lot of noise, hoping
to hide the jangle in her head. Like soccer
it was � the running up, down, sideways
after a ball which at the time was bigger
than the earth, though like the earth it was
kicked round to allies, wrestled from foes .
Actually, perhaps it was my eyes which were
the balls � I couldn�t see with all that roaring
going on. The lions seemed accustomed
to the crowds, on home-ground � but up close
I could have sworn, that there were arms behind
the nets, not always waving. Perhaps the jangle
was for thumbs, or toes�
Then there were those who went on about God
and hollow spaces � transforming roaring into
singing, because His Love is sweet, even when
your team has lost and you�ve gone home alone
to wash your feet.
No, I can�t see how you could
remember. I don�t mix much. At most all you�d
recall was someone merely human laughing
idiotically, cowering in her arena, afraid
how it might show she was of the same breed.
QUARREL
Your tongue picks the nits in your daughter�s hair,
heavy pre-Raphaelite across her face - your tongue
licks the holes where you squeezed the pores
for blackheads. Her hurt grey eyes cascade between you
as you watch her dimly, falling. You cannot tell if her mouth
opens to speak or scream or breathe, because there�s a black
head in it you long to get at, and whatever it is,
it roars too loudly while your tongue searches inside it
for spots of pain. You find grey in sockets where
eyes were, a head razed of its hair. You hang them neatly
from a hook in the ceiling, waiting, while your tongue grows
long enough to pick the nits you�ve stored in your own brain.
INCH
You feel it as an arch under the sole,
this sudden springing above the ground
you've limped along, hour after hour
for days and weeks and months. For years.
You grow that one inch taller. Enough to feel
you can bear up and look him in the eyes.
They will no longer look down on you.
He can't see why.
And he grows smaller,
you see the skull beneath the scalp,
the hollows in the eyes, the absence
of crow's feet where there was crowing,
and you walk high. You walk away before he
leaves, expecting you to follow. You rise,
wish all goodnight and walk away. Your soul
arches to meet the full weight of the sky.
CHECKED NAPKINS (For Matthew on his birthday)
It is too late for family or friends, for the arm
or hand, the bag of fruit, the take-away,
the wine or home-made pies covered by napkins.
You smile as you smiled when your children
crossed lines on a page and said �man� �
you smile and you take and say �thanks,
that�s just lovely�, and you listen and talk small,
thinking how lucky Dante was to have a journey
which led him from one brand of pain to another.
There isn�t anything which weighs as heavily as nothing.
Pelicans dive into rivers of tarmac, thinking it water.
They die consciously but not knowingly. It is nothing,
same as with love - the broken neck, the wings, the eyes
have been yours too. Whichever road you travelled,
above you was a sky from which pelicans fell.
You think now of star-crossings everywhere, and think �man�
or �son of man� � what difference does it make? Even
the thoughts that cross your mind are drained of pain �
your body has stolen it again and again, erecting boundaries
as though dimensions were a cross-product of dream and fear.
It is too late for triangles of any kind. There are only
the checks on napkins, of family, of friends,
of a cross-section of �man�, which you once were.
THE ROAD TO PAPHOS (For Mary Plant)
It was long and somnolent, the road to Paphos �
Mary steering us like a benign Charon
down the tarmac of oblivion, till the blaze struck
suddenly emerging round a bend, heralding
Aphrodite�s arrival with a wealth of gold
that made me shield my eyes and catch my breath.
But before I had recovered, just as suddenly,
a black mouth swallowed us. I must have gasped,
for Mary laughed and dragged me back to earth
and the tunnel we were driving through �
till once again we were delivered into the light
of Aphrodite, and her sea.
We stopped
with other worshippers to view her rock. Mary
was sure they�d picked the wrong one � the rock
beyond it had a cleft, �like an open shell�, she said
parting her hands. I mused, �or like a vulviform�.
That Mary is an artist of visual genes, and I
a gamester with words, might not necessarily mean
a difference in perspective. For Aphrodite�s clefts
must be like shells of flesh, with ridges as though fingers �
when soft sensuality ripens into stone, it doesn�t really
matter how, I think, her beauty lingers�.
E.MAIL TO MEHMET YASHIN
When you heard the results, you sent an e.mail � �stupid�, you wrote, the word erupting from the page
in pain, in anger and, perhaps, disdain.
But who for, Mehmet, for what?
the referendum in itself? the Cypriot Greeks?
or your own dream? Because you�d had some faith
in miracles? Some hope that time could erode hate
as water erodes rocks? Sad, stupid time�..
Rocks, we should know, have definition. But you felt
anguish for the All, like water takes the shape
of what it enters, yet remains fluid. Turk,
Greek, Armenian, man or woman, child � you
took their suffering without division and mingled it
with yours. You remained pure.
Don�t ask again where you belong. With you in passion
are other souls alien to bordered lands. The language
that we speak defies translation into race or creed.
Our motherland is nowhere, and everywhere.
You write, towards the end, �poetry comes
from this uncertainty, but not from this stupidity,
of course�. The word no longer spurts. Three
weary syllables are giving way, perhaps already,
to that compassion which keeps maintaining
that it is possible to shape a better world.
RELATIVE TIME (For my Mother)
Towards the end, my mother would regularly
bid me wind the clocks she couldn�t reach -
how little time I felt I had, how slow
to respond, bipolared like a pendulum that�s stopped.
Younger, I�d rushed to do it, directing from the stool
the ticking and the tocking with a wave of each hand,
gleefully flitting with each ding and dong
as I had paced them, clock succeeding clock.
When time ran out between the chores
of my own motherhood and my lost name,
all it became was the tighter twisting of keys
in yet more faces without doors, each effort
a rehearsed piece played for my mother
who thought me younger than she.
She�s gone. As has my own young family.
And I�ve inherited the clocks, and the time
to wind them in. I keep their faces
within reach of mine. Sometimes their chimes
bring memories of lighter days. Sometimes
all they can say is GONE GONE GONE.
MEMORY RAPE
She took her pants off, you said,
what else was I to do?
There, in the middle of a field
towards the end of your twenties
you rammed the castle gate
of �once upon��.
Now almost sixty, you tell me -
rejecting friendship and a mouth
of mere words, a tongue as guileless
as the one I kept curled in my cheek,
the nights we used to kiss, our lips
pressed tight, our covered bodies tighter.
Now I remember all at once
her looking on with greed
at so much happiness. It is her
face I study in the yellowing
group photo of teenagers
on the day we all returned
to different lands. She didn�t visit
ours, or its fields, till some eight years
after you and I had split. I�d felt no
outrage for girls who followed,
or, later, for your wife. They�d all
come after. But now I learn
how one can still rape innocence
at almost sixty, tear memories
like rent hymens, and blot the past
with blood. She was there, a witness
to life�s one timeless moment
when we loved like flaming angels
before the fall. Why do you
tell me now, far far too late
for us to choose a shared
damnation, that it was she
who had you at the torrid drop
from heaven? I, not at all.
BOARD AND LODGING
Biographers note she often joked
about not having had a say
in the choice of lodging. How she
would have preferred something
more elegant, less roomy, something
she could have cultivated in the mirror
rather than in reflections (which grew,
eventually, to knocking at her eyes).
Yet she had married - a man attracted
by her tongue, her roving mind,
assets she stumbled over in the kitchen.
And then she found that she could not
bear children, after all. Tending the two she had
ate into her, no matter how she tried
to waive her new maternal bond
with fresh abracadabras. Love tasted
more like hurt spiced hot with guilt.
At night she took to torturing the key-board
to release spells of words before they festered
in abstraction; to pounding molecules
like basil into blanks she had vacated,
ignoring smoke, sniffing out space.
And now, of course, she is admired,
honoured and loved by many who comfortably consume
(the number of biographies testify that)
her strings of molten pain gasping for breadth.
Had she been borne into the age of burning,
choice wouldn't have come into it. As it was,
one biographer explains: "it was the menu
which demolished her."
� Maria Grech Ganado
Reproduced with permission
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