With an “Alphabet of the Heart,” a young poet enters the labyrinths of poetry, seeking to make her voice heard. A voice as lyrical as it is epic from a young woman from Has, who knows how to convey it to us with musicality. The beautiful sounds slipped through the verses, and I experienced the same feeling as if I were right there in Has.
I understood her spiritual world, I read the depth of her thought, because she seeks to enter the world of poetry with an “Alphabet” whose code only her heart knows. A code that is deciphered in her verses, which she passes on to all of us, and we must offer her our “Welcome” to the poetic table.
A young woman from Has, who knows how to sing the songs of her country with love, who knows how to shed tears for the young men who fell on the altar of freedom.
A young poet who knows how to speak with nature, bringing it to us in all its colors, so that we too can breathe in the scent of the mountain flowers, hear the chirping of the birds in the village of Lukinaj where she lives, the murmur of the river she crosses, and with her mystical verse she tells us: I dressed my body in the blue of the sky as a nightgown... How sweetly she knows how to choose her comparative figures. Ah! She chooses the morning dew as a bath for her body.
Look at what imagination hides inside her soul, how like a thief she knows how to steal the colors of the rainbow, to paint with a brush the gates of Prishtina where she seeks to enter magically, because she seeks the impossible, because she believes in herself, so that by shattering the chains of fanaticism she might enter with a poetic “Passport of the Soul.” She finds happiness in seeking these things, and she flies into eternity just as she wishes to become, because she knows how to steal the golden ray of the sun.
In the twenty-four hours that pass, she only hopes, because vitality inspires her. But she also cries out in her verse, for the nakedness that seems to her like a stripped-bare pride, and for this she weeps. Because she seeks to be cradled in the whiteness of the heart, because there she feels warm. And for this she calls upon the Sword and the Razor, symbols that strike down evil.
That is why she seeks to become a poet, so that with her verse she can awaken the “living dead.” “WITHOUT A MAYBE, I AM WHO I AM”... This is how she bursts forth in verse. But she knows that the poet is troubled and inspired by every fluctuation, yet she is not afraid, because she has the light that illuminates her path, which battles against the creeping Middle Ages. Anti-values buy even the sun, she howls. Therefore, she seeks to crucify pettiness in her verse, because she wants to defend the truth, extinguishing the lie.
But for this to happen, everyone must know the DNA of the nation, turning their heads toward the values of those who left us our land, so that this time does not become unreal.
Rise up, O people of my country... this young woman calls out in verse, to tell emigration to stop, because she is afraid of imagining how the future will unfold.
She is a student, but every time June comes to a close she suffers, she suffers because she does not want to return to kneading dough in the trough. She loves knowledge, because she knows how to pierce the darkness. She seeks to sail in the ocean of eternity... And for this she will not hesitate, she will not be afraid, because she hates ignorance, which she wants to solve just as she solves a difficult equation.
I cannot live like a snake under a stone... because I cannot bear it, and she gives herself advice, taking it from great people. To live before you die, the poet says. She travels on this road snatching a piece of the sun, to shatter the darkness in the mouth of the light. This is what she seeks, and she does it, because she has faith in herself, because she raises an iron curtain against everything bad. She dances freely without chains in poetry, and she wants the same in life. But people must hold the symbol of peace in their souls, which she beautifully compares to a concert of happiness. Yet she knows that an eclipse often happens, not from nature, she says, but from the circle in which she lives.
But she draws inspiration from poets who do not stop even when an earthquake shakes their minds. That is why she wants to become a poet. This is how she feeds her dream, walking on a path of light, casting her brush over multicolored poems. She will sing to Rexhep Smajlaj, who for her is a Prometheus. Because Illyria has had such figures of whom she boasts in her verse. She loves the Illyrian land, she loves Has, she loves Prishtina,
and full of joy she goes out to Shëngjin and speaks to the wave with a new code.
An alphabet that only her heart knows how to decipher, and with this alphabet she goes to Shkodër and touches Rozafa, and she takes courage, she is mesmerized by the gorge of Valbona and sails into eternity... then she snatches a handful of sand from Velipoja to keep as a souvenir, to return again, because her eye and soul were blinded by that beauty and she gets drunk without raki, because she fell in love not with his body... And she told this secret to her sister from Has, who has suffered on the sidewalks of life until today, but whom pen and paper cannot break. Yes... she has decided. She will become a poet. Because she has faith in herself, because the words of Uncle Rifat rest on her like a necklace of pride. She knows how to keep them in her heart, because she has an alphabet that the bullet of time cannot kill.
She will enter the castle of poetry with a Passport of the Soul... she quenches her thirst in the scent of a sapling. For shelter she has a star with a king’s crown... She lives, she travels with a passport of the soul.
This is the soul of Doni Shehu.
I entered her soul without a passport. I feel happy.
Vlorë, 2011 Liljana Troqe
