A Poem
In May of this year, my childhood friend Grigor Jovani and I took a trip back after twenty years of emigration. For twenty years, the doors of our homes in the town of Laç have stayed shut. Close relatives living in the town look after them. We hadn’t planned to come, but memories and nostalgia drew us back, like a distant love we couldn’t bear not to see.
AT THE GATES OF MEMORY
Where are we going tonight, my friend?Do you see the moon?She has cast the cloud’s veil over her beautiful lashesAnd is going to sleep.The fields have fallen asleep;Do you hear the wheat stalks creaking,As they grow taller, their bodies itching, their beards sweating?
The town is silent!Only the road, a vision of longing,Keeps it tied to the world.A river of loveUpon whose body,Feelings and desires walk,The echo of their voiceHoarse from successive winters.
Where are we going tonight, my friend?The town rocks in sorrowful dreams,The day’s fatigue weighs on its eyelids—a tombstone.No one is waiting for us!The light of our constellation is far away.Kostandini is bringing the pledge, riding on a legend.
Our childhood memories have forgotten us.They grew tired of waiting for the exiles,And found another nest, to embroider with filigreeThe breasts of soaring birds.
We abandoned them;We could not build a museumWith our parents’ advice and love,To wait for us tonight,When silence makes a noise in the deep skyOf our inner world.
The heavy breathing of the car,Ruins the harmony of the night’s silent concert.Its smoke,Stains the mimosa flowers and the town’s dreams.
20 years!The town has wasted away from longing.The faces of the houses have grown unshaven,Covered all over in wrinkles.Here and there, their tiled hair has fallen out.Someone has planted on their foreheadsA satellite-dish eye,To watch the beauties of the world.The beautiful eyes of the town have been forgotten.
Silence!The national costume of our town is torn.The eyes of the windowsSunk deep into their sockets.Far, far away, a bell is heard!A group of children,Drag a string of empty cansDown the long road, to the gates of the future.Can you decipher their words?They are the notes of a guitar, singing to the awakening.They are our desires.They complain they found no place to climbOn the branch of the tree trunk,Where the canary of inspiration sangA love song,In the long marathon of poetic blossoming.
Shhhh!Don’t speak!Let’s listen to their breathing.How beautifully the trees are dressed!What holiday is it today?
This breeze of longing,Combed the green hair of the leaves with its fingers.A handful of stars spills over their shoulders.The trees in folk costumes,On the grand stage of the town, dance a great dance.The ensemble of greeneryDances the dance of light, tonight,When the beautiful face of the moon,Sits over the Krujë mountain range.It looks like a caravan of victors,Rushing to bring the news of victory to the ancient castle.
Why are you silent, my friend?Nostalgia holds the weight and the years of absence.What is this voice that dissipatesIn the chests and breaths of the trees?And this applause?The palms of the leaves, clap togetherFrom the breeze of our breathing.The veins of the leavesLook like the lines of fate on our hands.They soak up the sun, grow and turn greenFrom the laughter of passersby.
The dithyrambs of their music,Knock on the crystal-clear, coldAnd lifeless panes of the politicians’ myopic eyes.The air pants,The moon forms a disk and sets off on foot up the mountain pass,Up there where the legends sleep,Above the grain field that has been left barren.
The moon pulls the reins of a cloud horse,To pause for a moment over the valley,Where the free poetic verse of the spring flows.To catch the scent of a jujube tree,That has blossomed into purple stars.
Tonight when the sweetness of the air,Melts like wax and hides away in the bosom of the earth.Do you hear the distant music of the weasel?Its testament expresses a desire for life.The deep abyss between the mountains, in the dark,Grows wild and falls silent, bathed in sweat,Disliking this euphony of the tree and the breeze.
Take a shot of joy and down it to the bottom,So we forget the flow of the years that have passedInto the deep ditch of memory,Which wears away with heavy erosionThe building of our fragile being.
We are in the arms of childhood,Today and the future are ours.There is no one!Only us, the night, the silence, the stars, the moon, the memories.
We are not alone, my friend!The citizens sleep, but the town cannot fall asleep.It welcomes and sees off times and histories, in a leather cloak.Thoughts tire it out,They bring it insomnia;It has no Valium, the pills are expensive,It cannot afford them at the pharmacy.Memories tire it out.
On the face of the road,The veins have narrowedFrom the heavy walking of the travelers,Who seek in its flowA light of hope for tomorrow.
Here and there, a broken tile,Ruins the softness of its skin’s membrane,The beauty of the eyes of a new hotel,At the end of the bend,And at the beginning of tomorrow.
What are you measuring with your nostalgic steps?We have measured these roads thousands of times.Times changed, the roads are the ones we left.Their kisses are accompanied by the sugary dustOf the gray color, that the shoes take on.Gray, like their very heart and life.
Where will we find a place to sleep?Shall we knock on the hospitality of this hotel,Which our brothers brought back from Europe,Loaded on shoulders bruised by the “paradise” quarry?Don’t tell me, “we have our own homes”!Their keys are with the caretakers,Who look after them every year.We pay them, so the tongue of the lockStays silent. So the cover of the door to the book,Where we grew up, stays closed.So the birds of memory do not migrate,Locked away as they are in their silent cage.
How did we divide the years like this,Into three chapters of a painful novel,Where the past, the present and the future,Never meet one another?
The past finds it hardTo reach out a hand to the new era;It fiercely guards in the diary of memories,The graces of its beauty.
How? Shall we step forward,Look at their foreheads, and greet them?Let us go, but carefully;They carry the years of our age on their shoulders,And great emotions could be fatal to their lives.
The other parts in the poetry collection
