'Suspended thoughts - Poems for Hermeta'

Author: Gorg Peresso 

Publisher: Horizons Publications / 2026

Pages: 68

We come from the same background, so to speak, in that we were both priests but are no longer.

We both worked in communications, he in radio and I in print media.

This being a small community we were acquaintances rather than friends.

Now we find ourselves in this home of retirement, along with so many others.

But Gorg is also a writer of novels and of poems. And thankfully he has continued writing.

The slight book I am reviewing today is his latest collection of poems, dedicated to Hermeta.

Some are short, almost epigrammatic, while a few are quite long.

I choose to quote from Variations on a theme. Each stanza is followed by a translation in French (translated by Lydia Zammit), Spanish (Maria Carla Spinedi), Russian (Yana Psaila) Italian and Maltese.

I refuse 

to be a valet stand

in this predisposed society 

whose history is written by unqualified politicians

and their myopic scribes

during summits of inconclusive photo shoots.

I refuse 

to be a musical carpet

where a strutting soloist sings his solipsism

in the limelight of a burnout self.

And then is heard no more.

I am a constant voyager

in search of the shadow 

that indicates elsewhere 

the light of the true self.

I refuse 

to be a prisoner of the functions of my body.

I am the mind unlimited by space and time and gender.

I am the writer and the singer of my song

flavoured with the sweet and bitter aroma of the orange zest.

I refuse 

to be a crepuscular dream,

a rambling fable lost in the darkness of the wood,

a restless imp haunting and poking a dormant mind.

When dawn breaks in fragments 

our crepuscular dreams,

send in the clowns 

to clean and sweep 

the empty silent Grand-Place

while they dig this tune:

"All we need are three verbs;

to act, to do, to perform.

And of course, to love."

All the rest is simple poetic nonsense.

I refuse 

to be a hanger of grotesque ceremonial robes,

masks that hide the face of landscapes,

of smiles and grimaces.

I refuse 

to be a citizen of this humbug,

we call love, politics and - occasionally - religion 

worn out by a heavy, multicoloured coat 

we never dare call hypocrisy.

Lord grant me the decency of a faithful dog 

whose nostrils catch the mystery beyond the horizon.

Grant me the stubborn gentleness of a donkey 

on whose back you entered the beautiful gate of Jerusalem.

Lord, lead me, Lord,

to the stables of heaven.