I Will Not Take The Pills Before I Cut My Fingernails. Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

I will not take the pills before I cut my fingernails.
I will not sing a verse before.
Do not say I am threatening.
To sing verses be not in my discretion
I feel that duty


And for that duty I will my blood shed


Now I be not in childhood
I was not noble then save my own childhood
For I had not sung to make me noble:
But now that I have sung the Verses
The Muse called me noble in my lowliness
And since then hath uttered:
Noble therefore sacred.

Long
Long
The winds
Sung
Yesterday
And long
The wood trees have shaken
The trees in the small wood:
Haunted the echoes of the caves
That from their vantage point the seas
Overlook and waters

But then
Silent, too silent stood that plain in old Mtahleb

in the wavering moon
trembling
under my feet I sensed
the plain quivering.

Yet I shall sue the Plain for its silence.

And
With the Muse I will lodge complaint
For too much Silence.

I human, yearn
And when that's granted
For other things I yearn
New things
Yet that
Is my callousness
And
Simultaneous
The glory of the Man in Time and Space.
Rotation of Civilizations
New to New in ever-increase
And Extension ever-extension breeds in ever-increase.