I am sure it happens to most bookworms around the world. My moment in time this last week was the discovery, on my sagging shelves at home, of a book by one of the most exciting poets of the Liverpool generation that gave us beat poetry - Roger McGough's Melting into the foreground. It is not the only book I had bought some day, probably as I raced through the Valletta streets, shelved it and forgotten all about it... until it is resdicovered. Semi-retirement such as mine helps with that.

What I found incredible was not only the date I bought it - 28 August 1987 - but also the beauty of its content, despite having read some of the poet's other works such as In the glassroom, Unlucky for some and Holiday on death row. McGough's people poetry was once described as having done for English poetry what champagne does for weddings. His considerable querky, compassionate voice and the ability to make his readers smile and be sad at the same time is a gift the muses are very stingy about.

But while finding the book, dusting it and throwing myself into it was a welcome respite from the humdrum of the current Maltese media scene, there still was a surprise waiting for me.You see, the book has some refreshing poetry McGough, who is 83, wrote in the late 70s and 80s, offering one a pathway into his poetic realm dominated by a social commitment and a unique way of looking at people and places. But to find a poem entitled Malteasers, twelve holiday snapshots was the icing on the cake. I am sure there are avid readers of poetry who must have known this for decades, but a discovery for me.

Caught as we are in the grip of a long hot summer, I am sure my editors will grant me their tolerance to reproduce the whole poem, set as it is in a Malta that has been changing and metamorphosing, not necessarily always for the better, since then:

            (i)         Xagħra:                                   (ii)        Żurrieq:

                        The sun                                                village square

                        Behind you                                         noon. You

                        Jaws open                                            and your shadow

                                                                                    Posing

            (iii)       Mosta:                                     (iv)       Golden Bay:

                        After noon                                          a white sticky hand

                        Your shadow                                      melting

                        Posing.                                                            Holds an empty

                        In the distance                                                ice-cream cone

                        You

                        Sitting it out

            (v)        Għajn Tuffieħa:                       (vi)       Birżebbuġa:    

                        Turkish kids                                        the shadow

                        Laying siege                                        of an ice-cream cone

                        To Maltese                                          sticky and melting

                        Sandcastles                                         seeps

                                                                                    Into the sand

            (vii)      Valletta:                                  (viii)     Mġarr:

                        A Liberian tanker                                is bzarr

                        Laden                                                  Valletta

                        With suntan oil                                    is betta

                        Slides

                        Into the harbour.

                        Slickly

            (ix)       Baya:                                       (x)        Victoria:

                        The Bay of Nuns.                                In the bar

                        Mermaids of the Lord                         at lunchtime

                        Wearing black bivouacs                      topless

                        Frolic piously                                      Gozo dancers

                        In the foam

            (xi)       Dwejra:                                   (xii)      Breakfast at Birgu

                        Neolithic railway lines                        Sliema lunch date

                        Reach out to Sicily.                             Tea at Tarxien

                        In the depot on the seafloor                Mdina at eight.

                        Stone locomotives

                        Await the seismic recall

                        To service

If you've enjoyed this McGough treat as much as I did on discovering it, I am sure I am forgiven.

That Saigon moment

The incredibly chaotic scenes reaching us from Kabul airport in the past few days took many of us and some of the world media, back to 1975 when the US forces went through the humiliation of abandoning the loyal South Vietnamese to flee as the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, as we knew them at the time, approached the capital, Saigon, to bring a long and detested war to an end.

I remember being on night duty when the Saigon story unfolded. We depended heavily on our UPI and Reuters teleprinter services for our foreign news pages, but of course this US debacle deserved frontpage treatment which I gave it with gusto. The Vietnam War was especially unpopular with the younger generation. You could feel the panic as the pages rushing in reverberated continuously inside the teleprinter room with roll upon roll of stories of desperate men and women wanting to evacuate and American soldiers and officials taking precedence into helicopters, no doubt thankful it was all over and they had avoided being taken back home in a black sack.

The same desperate humanity emerged at Kabul as Afghan civilians besieged the airport terminal as Western countries, those who had after all occupied Afghanistan in the first place, scrambled to evacuate personnel in what has been called "a dizzying coda" to America's longest war.

Now suddenly, the West is having doubts the Americans and their European poodles should have left, citing women's rights, regional stability and anti-terrorism to justify staying - exactly the very same reasons they gave back in 2001 when they started the war. Commentators have been rightly asking: how many more decades did they expect the world to be held hostage to the narratives of "the humanitarian war"?

Now also, war-mongering politicians in the West, smouldering in solemnity and fake compassion,  are asking "the rest of the world" to help share in the taking of Afghan refugees. First they start a war, then lose it, and next everyone should help. It needs to be said that while Europe has, through the usual ex-imperial powers, had a finger in this sad Afghanistan pie, it was already taking in thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing from their war-torn country via places like Italy, Greece, Malta, Spain and other EU member states.

Immigration is already a major thorn in the EU's back. An Afghan invasion of the continent is the last thing most of the Centre-Right parties in power across Europe would be willing to take on. "No reason why Afghans should come here," a kind-hearted Austrian minister has said, quickly rebuffing calls to take more refugees after Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Olympic medals

The much-lauded feat by San Marino, smaller than Gozo and with less inhabitants than Birkirkara, of winning two Olympic medals elicited many a question. How could they, when we boringly stick to being happy our athletes manage to break unimpressive national records?

Someone told me: San Marino get their athletes from Italy, one of the most successful participants at the Tokyo Olympics. Sure, but if they got them from Italy they certainly cannot have been considered Olympic hopefuls as otherwise the Italians would have quickly drafted them in as they did with the successful oriundi.