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Paul P. Borg: Eternità. Poeżija ta’ Paul P. Borg, Viżwali ta’ Gabrial Caruana. Horizons, 2015.

This is a handsome and extraordinary book, but then the two authors, Paul P. Borg and the veteran artist Gabriel Caruana, are both extraordinary.

Beautifully designed, this oblong volume has pages printed on art paper in different colours, presenting a succession of colourful images by Caruana and verse by Borg coming straight from the heart.

It is an immediately striking book that can tempt you, as it tempted me, to read any page, and then tempt you to read more pages, until it hypnotises you into reading all the poems and linger over most if not all the pictures.

I have known Borg for many years as an arresting writer of novels, short stories, studies of Maltese arts and crafts, and, above all, as the most passionate writer on the environment I know in this country.

He is surely one of the best Maltese prose writers of our time, and a versatile one, but it is only now that readers will discover him as a writer whose verse can be as powerful as his prose.

Borg’s verse is of the free type, often-structured in stanzas not always having the same number of verses.

The rhythms mirror the strength of his feelings, often flowing irresistibly.

Almost any quotation will give some idea of this, such these two verses from Salisbury fis-sajf (Salisbury in the summer Wiċċ b’ieħor int ja xita mħeddla hawn/ filwaqt li tfaqqa’, tballat, tkisser f’dari!

In the foreword he wrote for this book (there are two others), the late Peter Serracino Inglott writes of Borg’s imagery: “The poems relishing the beauty of nature are, I imagine, what anybody familiar with the previous work of Borg woud expect” and sees a reflection of this in Caruana’s images.

I suspect, however, that Serracino Inglott’s old enthusiasm for Caruana’s work might have made him overrate quite a few of the latter’s drawings in this book.

I should add, however, that Richard England’s foreword does not appear to chime with my misgivings about the quality of some of the work by Caruana in this book.

A number of images, I cannot but admit, strike me as superb, such as the ones on pages 8,9 and 12.

Lovers of contemporary Maltese, written with both skill and passion, cannot but acquire it

Most of Borg’s poems are greatly sorrowful laments for the continuing corruption or downright destruction of Malta’s natural environment.

They are bitter acknowledge-ments that the great battles Borg’s books have waged to protect it have been largely in vain, a failure that makes Borg take to task the God who has played a great role in his life; the God of creation who is now letting what He has made go to rack and ruin.

His long poem Eternità expresses his disappointment, his rage even, at this God who no longer seems to act like the angry God of the Old Testament, or like the thundering gods of ancient Greece when faced with man’s evil or thoughtless acts. This is a strong poem, perhaps the volume’s core piece to which Charles Briffa, in his long and often perceptive foreword, gives much attention.

It is perhaps a pity that Serracino Inglott’s foreword pays much attention to Caruana’s drawings and very little indeed to Borg’s poems.

But then, perhaps the priest-philosopher could not tackle the poet’s clamorous loss of faith with his habitual witty style.

In a few poems, Borg allows us to see him reacting to strong personal sorrow or joy. Of the former, the most notable was written when his wife miscarried.

The first two verses of this longish poem seize our attention immediately: Inbżaqt waħdek qabel sirt ja ibni żgħir/minn ġuf ommok b’ħarstek wieqfa fuqna t-tnejn and towards the close he thinks he sees his father, whose memory Borg has always revered, looking at him pityingly from the grave.

On the other hand in Fi Ħdan l-Eternità, as he walks by the shores of Lake Llanberis in Wales, his love of nature ignites his longing for his beloved, whom he wishes at his side at a moment when he feels on the threshold of eternity. Perhaps the spirit of Wordsworth was at his side as he wrote this striking piece.

Borg’s skill in writing a dialectal Maltese, shown at its best in a masterpiece, Ċikku il-Bidwi Malti, is displayed in his poem L’Indjan ta’ Kopenhagen, when he imagines an Indian painted on a wall in Copenhagen, address-ing him with such words as, Ismagħni x’ser ingħidlek,/ iftaħħem, Pawl, widnejk.../x’ħin taqli l-aħħar ħuta/u turdom l-aħħar blot.../ imbagħad għidli,/imbagħad min jof?/Tikilx imbagħad il-fliws?”

This is Borg at his bitterest, perhaps.

This is a volume any lover of books will want on their shelves. Lovers of contemporary Maltese, written with both skill and passion cannot but acquire it.