The Cats of Valletta

The Cats of Valletta


The cats of Valletta are abundant,
handsome, fearless.
If spoken to, they answer with a mew
or with contemplative silence,
both signs of
courtly and antique respect.
The Phoenicians brought them
before there was a Europe,
and they are, therefore, attuned to the
songs of gods otherwise forgotten.
When the bombs fell
for three years
solid as a burning curtain,
it was they who threaded
their way between the blasts
and those who would, might follow,
with the odd grace of the two-legged,
to refuge by the cool and extinguishing sea.
The cats were waiting for the narrow ships
to come for them.
What the people were waiting for
they could not imagine: maybe
for the flames to fade that they might
return to their strange destinies
among the stones.

The Phoenician ships did not, that time, arrive.
No matter.
The Cat who is all cats
can afford to bide his time.