On a clear day

Whatever Chiara's placing in the Eurovision song contest last night, there was already one thing that could not be clearer. The singer had won more hearts than one can count, even before; with her angelic voice, she had called up her Angel on the competitive stage. The contest is one of the very, very few things that unite those of us who crowd this little island, where we continuously elbow each other in endless division.

There is much difference of opinion until the winner of the Malta Song Festival is chosen. And, even after that is done. All sorts of allegations fly about.

Suspicions aside, and some nastiness too, when hopes are dashed and one's favourite loses, disappointment is as natural a reaction as the joy and satisfaction of the winner. This year many had believed it would be the hour of Olivia Lewis. I confess I followed her progress with more than average interest.

She and her family, too, hail from Qormi. I recall meeting her, when she was a child, when I was doing house visits in the constituency. She had taken part in various children's festivals.

At her first light, her promising future was already discernible.

Olivia's day will come. This year, Chiara returned to the scene of her great first success. If, a few months ago, the local result was close, the empathy that built up with her was incredible. Every year, we all want our representative on the European stage to do well. The nation's best wishes have accompanied every single one of our singers who participated.

If we remember vividly and with undimmed pride the achievement of Ira Losco (who placed second), Mary Spiteri (third), and of Chiara herself (also third), it is not to dim the memory of the warmth that accompanied the rest of our representatives over the years. Each one that went up - sometimes as duos, as in the case of Giorgina Abela and Paul Giordmaina, and of Julie and Ludwig last year - gave of their best.

Chiara's best includes her incredible charisma, which competes for attention with a voice that was created to sing ballads as naturally as the dew caresses the rose, come the dawn. In the build-up to last night, since she won the Malta Song Festival for a second time, she showed that, if you keep your day clear, you can truly see for ever, if one might take some liberty with a great, old lyric.

It is almost impossible to believe that someone with a warped mind really tried to wound Chiara with cruel remarks about her generous figure. Her clarity of thought and deep inner strength, brushed that aside on the recent Xarabank programme that highlighted her as a person, not only as a singer.

She came through as a personality, with a poise that is not acquired through practice - it has to run in one's blood. I have only met Chiara once. We were on the same flight to Cyprus, where she was going as part of the approach to last night's great event. Singer Mike Spiteri, an old friend, introduced her to us. As we waited for our luggage, in the early hours of the morning, her charisma captivated us even before happy recollection of her successes came to one's mind.

Some say that few take the Eurovision song contest as seriously as we Maltese do. I, for one, hope that we do continue to take it seriously. As Chiara emphasised during her stay in Kiev, along with our neighbours from Greece and Cyprus, we are a Mediterranean people.

Music and song are part of us, as much as the sun and the sea, wine and olive trees. But, above all, we badly need to retain whatever makes us recognise that we can bind ourselves together, and need not divide over so many things, so predictably, and frequently.

We do so not just over politics, which is our national drug, a pipe of war we smoke with abandon, though many of our young seem to be kicking the habit, out of disgust for their hooked elders. We divide over saints and fireworks, if not as fiercely as we used to do, yet still far too much.

We divide over foreign football teams, the relative merits of beetroots and beans, and whether Big Ben can still be relied on to strike the right time of day.

We do unite in our sympathy for victims of disasters, in our willingness to dig in our pocket to give that little something to others, as we shall surely be doing for the distressed Dar tal-Providenza. One would be hard pressed to find much else that leads us to a common stand.

The Eurovision song contest, whether or not it is as great an occasion as we perceive it to be, allows us a rare clear day, a reminder that there are times when we can see for ever, together.

This year that reminder is symbolised so magnificently in Chiara. In the years to come there will be others to remind us that there is good cement that can keep us together.

Chiara demonstrated something else, besides her ability to sing in a way that enthrals. Driven by her happiness in marriage, she wrote the lyrics of Angel as a dedication to her husband.

She shared the message with us. Perhaps, this morning after, it would be neither untimely, nor imprudent to find a meaning for Malta in that message. In Angel, Chiara writes hauntingly of a lost world. She exhorts that one must believe. She promises a land of hope; a land of dreams.

It should not be impossible to hope that the dream of a good dose of unity can remain part of our national sheet music.

Island poetry

While so much attention was being given to Chiara's build-up to the Eurovision song contest, by happy coincidence two collections of poetry came out that, in their separate, yet converging ways, demonstrate that the Mediterranean is in our poetry, as well as in our song.

As a matter of fact, the poetry of George Borg and Dunstan Attard is close to song.

Raymond Mahoney, a musical poet like no other I have ever come across, entwined the two artistic strands in beautiful lyrics for memorable songs. Those included Little Child, with which Mary Spiteri, to the touching music of Paul Abela, moved imperiously to Malta's first high placing in the Eurovision song contest.

Another coincidence lies in the fact that George Borg and Dunstan Attard are both professional bankers. (So was Raymond Mahoney, until he took early retirement, not so long ago.) The dry world of banking affairs does not dry up artistic talents to be found among those who earn their living in the sector.

The poetry of George Borg is of the type that should be heard, and not only read. His short, beguilingly simple verses, tinkle like a bell urging flowers to bunch together. Very often, too, the words sound like the sigh of light waves touching ever-so-lightly the trembling lips of an expectant shore.

George is deeply and openly in love with nature. Three previous collections carry the reader to The valley's water, Solitude on a sandy beach, and Water flowers. In the title to his latest collection, which includes poems written between 1992 and 2004, the poet confesses that he "forms dreams out of rock".

He talks of "a handful of sand" which he "caught crying" to feel pressing on it, "feet beautiful and white" loitering on the beach, and of a poetry that used to approach him, and which he would "drink as it filled his mouth". Today, the wheel has turned: "poetry has taken him over".

One can read the poetry of George Borg without putting this slim volume down. Yet, the safest way to savour it is to read a poem now and then, slowly, and out loud. Otherwise, one could grow dizzy with the headiness the simple/profound verses can induce.

When Dunstan Attard was preparing his collection - Island I Call Home: poems from the Mediterranean, he kindly offered to let me take a peek at it. It had to be a long, long peek. Dunstan's poetry portrays the innermost feelings of a soul on a quest. It is a soul searching for values, for truth, and - above all - for itself.

It can be read out aloud. The poet often joins with kindred spirits to give readings in public. Yet, this poetry, I feel, is best read without uttering it, keeping it to oneself, letting one's soul follow that of the poet.

Dunstan Attard does not go on some ego trip. Much of his poetry is outward looking, describing, with bold yet delicate strokes, these our Mediterranean islands he very clearly, passionately loves. He, too, is in love with nature, and with the environment as it also has been shaped by man and events.

The poet's eyes capture sights that transmit a message to his heart to sing them out in poetry, whether in our islands, in London, Seville or Rome. Whether he is awed by the setting sun, intrigued by the mystery of a tramp's wine, or disgusted by greed and disregard for others, he does not fail to respond.

Dunstan's poetry is a series of paintings in words. When he looks into "the eyes of the children of a village" in Gozo, he sees smiles "more naked than the sun", and hearts "softer than poppies".

He sees so many things - and, through them, the reader sees him, a man restlessly searching through one experience after another, trying to learn how to "fill a jar that was so full of sun".

Will he ever learn? Hopefully, probably not. When a poet learns, that is the day when the flow of his poetry will dry up. And Dunstan Attard is not ready for that; not yet. This collection, published in the United States, cries out to "the first Maltese" to "ply our minds" to "save us from ourselves".

A poet knows that one cry can never be enough. Dunstan Attard will, surely, be offering more.