The Tercets is a remarkable poem, remarkable for its length, audacity, and for the lush, deft skill of its author, Jack Farrugia. Although it is a narrative poem telling of the aching longing of lost love, cast as a pilgrimage through the landscapes of the Levant, it is perhaps more accurately described as a descriptive poem, a landscape at once external and interior. It does not rely on incident to tell its story, but conjures a narrative of a stream of images, of the experience of the senses, of the hallucinatory imagination of the pilgrim. We travel with the pilgrim through his unending, footsore journey, through his remembered past, and through his questioning of his life and pilgrimage and its ultimate goal.


Told in spare, three line stanzas which give the poem its title, Jack Farrugia has created a masterwork: a poem of breathtaking depth and range and beauty. It is an extraordinary achievement.