Hey brothers, sisters, and friends,Who live upon this earth...
The bomb I was waiting for has burst,The tune is played with drums...
Ukshin Morina unloaded it today,About the medals “Pegasi” gives away...
You do not know, in Gjirokastër,In that fortress, in that hearth...
Where Enver himself was born,Who slaughtered and murdered the people...
Another name was born today,Brainless, but with a woman’s mind...
Enver died, “Shabani” was born,Whose mind is like a fountain...
A “philosopher”, a man with many “brains”,Who milks people as if they were sheep...
Like Gogol, far away in Russia,Trading in dead souls...
He created a shadowy society,That herds poets into the milking pen...
He milks them for money, and gives them “value”,Spinning sweet words like wool...
A society with a name in the “world”,Full of values, works of note...
And the chairman like a conductor,Directs an entire assembly...
He gives us prizes and decorations,Like the Judas tree drops leaves in autumn...
The philosopher of Enver’s school,Lies to people by day and by dark...
He takes their money and sells them words,Making a mountain of a worthless career...
Talents, for a little surname,Lose their wool, their values, and their name...
But not for nothing, they “get a value”,That blows and lifts them like the wind...
For the values they have in their works,They give money and receive pieces of paper...
“These works from door to door,Are given by a worthless man”...
He publishes books in foreign languages,With words he races horses...
Through mountains, fields, and plains,Pagarusha herself receives a prize...
And Shabani rides on horseback,Shouting, trumpeting...
That he knows how to drive the society,Which is why its name is “Pegasi”
At the front, the first, like Skanderbeg,The mountain shakes, the earth melts...
The “Professor” of Philosophy,Has been blowing his horn for years...
Behind him a caravan of talents,Drop their pens and take up lenses...
To watch the prizes being handed out,The cheering full of noise...
Kristaq himself raises a hand,Every raise grants a crown...
A crown dressed in dreams,To make you cry, and make you laugh...
The poet bows his head down low,The chairman quickly takes the vote...
And hangs it on his neck like a bell,The poet doesn’t read this trickery...
He hangs a medal around his neck,What I’m saying is no blunder...
Every member gives fifty Euros,Kristaq lifts him up, makes him a hero...
A friend, when I told her once;“Your poetry has no value”...
Raised waves and harshly said;“Your word has no value...
My work of so much talent,Is valued by people with brains”...
And unexpectedly the cure was given,The man of value was Kristaq...
The river flows muddy, full of dirt,Downhill from the high mountain...
The society has been around for years,“With work and values of light”...
Year by year it does analyses,Like a lady knitting with needles...
And yet for a full 100 years,It elects Kristaq as our king...
Because Kristaq has such values,The wind never takes his chair...
Oh where are you, Kristaq Shabani,Your fame has reached as far as London.
Like Enver himself with fist and faith,A king himself until he dies…
* * *
Hey, brothers, today history,Makes noise within my verses…
Shabani goes, but there are others,Who are praised while being pissed upon…
In Greece, a full three societies,Take and give titles with shovels…
One is named “Dritë”,And speaks only with the gods…
In Piraeus, they say it has its nest,There its creators are sleeping…
Please keep up my song’s refrain,So Nase Jani himself can hear…
The chairman is an officer,He gives orders and takes none…
He hands out prizes every month,To Albanians in foreign lands…
Here the Comedy begins,Spun and spun is the whole story…
The President in Tirana,With a letter issues a firman…
The chairman of “Dritë” is decorated,Eyes closed in the middle of the day…
Dritëro is rubbing his eyes:“Nase, there is no one else like you”…
Who to kill, who to spare,What can you do for wretched art?
Nase leaves, Miho Gjini comes,I am telling you in case you don’t know…
He too, like many others,Turns out to be a man of value…
“Grand Master” I read about him,But for what works, I never understood…
Enver locked him up inside,So his song would not be heard…
Now he’s out and without comment,He appeared to us as a man of brains…
Do you think they give decorations,For games and deceptions too?
***
In Tirana another game,Has begun to reign…
An Agron Tufa has appeared,Who has a name among birds and owls…
Every year in the name of art,He even forgets his father’s name…
He gifts prizes, gives appraisals,A chairman who makes decisions…
They say he was declassed,This poet, of forgotten value…
This chairman, but with no chairmanship,Who does as he wants and as he knows…
They hand out prizes, elevate works,With words they turn papers into balloons…
They forget that time and the years,Overturn the flatteries, the Hits…
The values he gives every day now,Are milk for the cauldrons…
They have no value for the years to come,But only for the shepherds themselves…
The flour is sifted when we make byrek,Like the stick that strikes the loom hard…
The bran is poured out, the pigs eat it,For the byrek the values remain…
And these ones I mentioned above,Are nothing but bran, dear art!
Let them bark like a dog at the moon,The child is silent in the mother’s womb…
When it takes shape, values for life,It comes out shouting, appears in life…
You all know, it comes crying,To take on its values in life later…
Those who bark, before being properly born,Are called among us, fake lambs...
***
Ah, brother, poet Fan Noli,The word you wrote came true…
Every Albanian a head, a state,Listens to himself, and speaks to himself...
One gives prizes in a society,Laughs at and curses the other every night...
That is why art resembles a beehive,From every verse, from every door...
It has wasps and so much noise,Shouting that pours like a river...
If you look for honey in them,You will tire yourself out and run a lot...
Every artist is a bee,Dropping the honeyed word onto the page...
He is no society and no flock,Nor a sheep that bleats baa..baa..baa..
He needs no shepherd, nor barking dogs,To raise him high with titles...
The artist is simply a laborer,He cuts and measures the word with his mind...
He sends it to friends and comrades,Not by the kilo and by the oka...
But with his mind like a dropper,Not for a prize and a war for a crown...
My state, tighten the laws today,Close the gates, close the paths...
These completely faithless wolves,Are a danger amidst the flock...
And the wolf asks only for a bullet,No dove’s wing is needed today...
It is no time for prizes,Nor for songs and manifestations...
But for work, night and day,To raise knowledge high...
Down with the “Philosophers” and the baseness...
PILO ZYBA
