Verging on 95 years of age, John Cremona still manages to overwhelm readers of his latest book of verse, Il-Kantiku tax-Xaghra, with captivating verse written in a luxuriant, even if deceptively simple, texture in the treasured language of the land he so loves.
In this book of verse (his sixth and fourth in which he published poems in Maltese) he again emerges as an undisputed master connecting with favoured themes: the space and time of his birth and childhood; the recurring pangs of nostalgia and the pull of memory; time slipping away from him as, indeed it does from all of us; his enduring love for his beloved Beatrice. The volume, enriched with occasional facsimiles of poems in the writer’s hand, with a 1938 portrait of the poet by Guido Calì, and images of engaging acrylics by Luciano Micallef, is divided into four sections.
The first one, dedicated to his descendents, carries the same title as that of the volume. Its currency is in large part ruminations on nostalgia. Here the nymph inside the cave urges him to kill the past and bury the future but the poet, unable to comply, retorts that memories have defeated his resistance and premonition has worn him out. Here, too, he laments with eloquence, no doubt on behalf of so many of us, the destruction of our natural heritage ... ghalqa mibnija tfewwah/minn qabarha fil-blat ... Jibkiha s-sema b’demgha/ ta’ malvizz ibbalzmat. A sudden teasing humour also surfaces in a number of poems such as when he recalls Christmas night in the church of his childhood. There he notes that the angel’s pudenda are neatly covered by a cloth saying Pax Hominibus; and in Hija Edgar where he tenderly sketches a brother who died in infancy ... sakemm haduh go karru mizbugh abjad/b’anglu zghir ikreh wahx/fuq kull wahda mill-erba’/kantunieri.
Rabta, the title of the second section, refers to the perennial bond between him and his departed Beatrice to whom it is dedicated. The poems here speak of a serene past, of longing and of desire for her vision, of an unattainable togetherness. Beatrice remains for Cremona a yielding source of inspiration, of a creative drive even if in Lil Marti the poet recalls her scepticism when he says ... u waqt li qed niktiblek/dawn il-versi/qed narak tidhaq bija./Ma jwasslu mkien, kont tghidli/u jien xtaqt naqbel mieghek./Forsi xi naqra jekk/inhares lejn il-hajja/jimlew l-irqajja’. In Wiccek li kien mixghul this enduring channel of inspiration is starkly depicted in a mental portrait of the beloved, forever maintaining a hold on the poet’s imagination, even as he is conscious that she now lies concealed beneath the unforgiving dust.
The third section, Fi pjazza battala, is dedicated to his great friend, the late Peter Serracino Inglott who, had he been alive, was expected to have written a foreword to this volume. In this part too, Cremona records the wistful solitude of walking the empty spaces; of navigating the void; of recollections of days now dissolved in the past; of a life that’s all but spent, but he does this with a voice that, when necessary, finds the vigour to resurrect from beneath the lava that has buried his world. In Ommi the mystifying symbiosis between mother and son is masterfully clarified with the use of a mere two dozen words: Ma kellix bzonn/inkellmek biex tismaghni/kif lanqas kelli bzonn/nahseb biex tifhimni/ghax int kont fija kif/fil-bidu jiena kont/imkebbeb fik. In Hal Tarxien he salutes the town where he now lives, together with its standing stones that read in the skies the hidden signs of life beyond the end.
The final section Il-Hajja, dedicated to himself (in a low voice), is the shortest, with one single final poem where, beyond the chasm that awaits his final faltering step, lies an infinity that imparts to the man the presence of the comforting love that he once knew in the cradle.