Verdala
Who is the boy who stands there
holding his father’s hand,
in his new school blazer,
wary, awkward, tanned?
Both of them in shorts
under the Maltese sun,
both forever caught
in an image neither one
expected would be all
to survive from those dead years,
as though clicking on an icon
to a world of disappeared
questions and emotions
that day kept at bay
but which now I understand
never go away
although we learn to live
as actors, faking rules
to fool ourselves life’s just
a long sequence of schools
at the end of which we’ll pose
as graduates, calm and wise,
not staring at the lens
with troubled, truthful eyes.
