not only humorous

Mother, I have come from emigration,For, counting from the very beginning,The profit comes to a few coppers!

“Twenty-eight years away from you,Across the world, all alone,Counting the days and the nights!

As you see, I have come back alive,I have poured love into your lap,Even though my brow and eyes are yellow!

Do you remember, mother, how you begged me,Slipped two gold coins into my pocket,Spoke softly, and did not falter:

“Take this, my son, and go into the world,For the climate here is cold,The north wind blows, the frost is hard…”

And I did not break your word,I fled through the forests and the pines,Without a coat, just as I was…

Now by night and now by day,Now in a meadow, now in hiding,Now alone, and now with the gods!

Now at sea, and now in the mountains,Now running, and now slowly,Now limping, and now in the dance!

Now with the Greek, now with Italy,Now lucky, now ill-fated,Often seeing the dawn out in the open!

You gave me schooling, dear mother,But in the world it is not writtenThat your belly will be full, that you will eat!

So I too, like the others,Running from door to door,Now in winter and now in spring…

Now with work and now without,Now with kindness, now by force,The years, mother, have brought me here!

I was knocked about in this world,But the toil so often in vain,Rarely did the kilo turn into an oka!

I sent you, mother, from America,Money and clothes, gleaming bright,To kill the hunger, and the fear as well!

I sent you lire from Italy,So that life would be more beautiful,While for myself, I slept in the streets…

I sent from Germany, from London,Pounds and marks, cars and toys,Yet field and hill were left without green…

But now that I have come, mother,I see that upon you has fallenThe shadow of death, a moon eaten away!

Who stole your beauty, mother,That you had for me like a meadow,Your bosom full of green?

When I left, I remember well,You were like ripe fruit, full-grown,Blossoming in the middle of the garden!

Head held high, full of parks,Dozens of chimneys upon your breast,Smoking out plenty and peace!

We were poor, it is true,But happy and clean,All together at one hearth!

Now the chimneys have no smoke,They stand like stakes that pierce the sky,Clad in ice, clad in frost!

Who ruined all you had sown,At the order of a priest or a dervish,Which one of them deigned to do it?

Who cut off your feet and hands,Telling you, trumpeting,That communism built them for us?

Enver was a communist, a traitor,Who killed, imprisoned and slaughteredThe men and the women who were our honour!

In field and mine we stayed day and night,With a pickaxe and a shovel,The youth of poor Albania…

We built the roads, and they were the onesWho applauded the great works,While we made carts of our shoulders…

When we laid rails, and cleared meadows,Our arms and our backs ached,When we dug tunnels and holes…

When we set dynamite and worth,When we blew the mountain into the air,We wanted light without interruption…

For communism did not bring the light,But sowed hatred and poverty in us,Worse than Zogolli had given us…

When we took the rails in our hands,Patiently and thoughtfully,We wanted the centuries to pass by…

When we drained rivers and marshes,We sought to make life beautiful,To know only the upward road…

Who were they, mother, the ones who came,And spilled the milk that we had milked,And slaughtered at the throat the ones we raised?…

*

Church of Laç, step upon step,When I climb the mountain upward,Forgive me, Lord, I pray you, forgive me…

Among churches you have no equal,You heal people's eyes,You give them a voice when fate chokes them!

You make the mute man speak,You shake the walls of the fortress,When I left, I left you a ruin!

Now you have grown storeys,Your glory has climbed, measuring suns,You bring the moon down after midnight.

You heal paralysed people,In their feet or in their hands,With your blessed benediction…

Since you can do so much, saint,And heal people even in their sleep,Like a sea of waves and foam…

Why, I pray you, does your handNot rise above the traitors,And make a few sacrifices of them…

When you blow sweetly, a breeze on the leaves,And with your breath push the clouds for us,Why do you not heal Ilir Meta…

Why, blessed Saint, do you letThis man with his addled mindRoam about astride a horse?…

Lead him, Saint, the gift of the dowry,Break the legs of the horse of politics,That roams and lies in broad daylight…

Saint Anthony, I pray to you today,For the poverty that toys with us,And pours tears into our souls…

When honey flows from your mouth,And fills the hives and the combs,I pray you, heal Edvin!

Heal Edvin, the drunken one,Who sits up high upon the mule,With his sword and knife sharpened…

Saint Anthony, who travels the world,And is famed for turning men from crime,I pray you, give Basha some sense…

Speak kindly into his ear,So that we may hear of Sali,That he has abandoned his love!

For age is slipping away,He, a hundred years in politics,Became a dowry for Mother Albania…

And he shamed her, he cursed her,With war and with bullets he killed her,More than the Greek and the Serb!

Saint Anthony, today I pray to you,I am ready to go into the ground,Only fill their cask with wine…

Not with wine that comes from grapes,Nor with the deeds of a scoundrel,Nor with the sweetness of must…

Fill it, saint, with fists and gall,Rising from every table and door,That politics slaughters like lambs…

Fill it with hatred, with gunpowder,For the one who toys with our fate,Who buys it, sells it, and does not say!

Give my people awareness,For they have been reduced to a shadowBy these informer leaders…

Give them the light to understand,When they speak, not to listen to them,But to understand the truth…

To understand that they are fleecing them,Each time they kiss them and measure them,And cut their stature down with a knife…

To understand that, upon our sweat,They play each time they sayThat we shall become a Babylon…

To see that every day,Through their wicked deeds,They are stealing our riches…

We without trousers, they rich,They in health, we worn out,All our lives with cracked lips…

They swollen and we parched,They sated and we stripped,They with fanfare and we in silence…

They all words and promises,Drunk and crazed in their revels,Upon my mother's pain…

Forgive me, Lord, do you hear my voice,From one Monday to the next,They have cholesterol, and we have not eaten…

Is it not possible that my mother,Worn out, parched by toil,Should have some joys as well?

She is a rare mother,Who, with the crown upon her brow,Gives birth to a girl, gives birth to a boy!

She is the one who bore Alexander,With a name as great as Olympus itself,Who won the world over with glory!

She bore Gjergj, who on horseback,May we be grateful to him for life,Passed like an eagle over the mountains…

Who won glory in Europe,Who saved it from the deep pitWhere they wanted to throw it like a ball…

And now the world every day raisesMonuments to him in its parks,While we, out of our minds,

Want, right inside Tirana,Like notorious traitors,To tear down that fame every day…

My mother, you know it well,Also bore a son of the brave,Who does not know what forgetting is…

She bore Napoleon himself,With a great name in life,From the brave winged Arbërs…

Ali Pasha and others,Not to mention at every door,Who gave the homeland its worth…

How did the gunpowder change like this,Who poured water into it,That men of dung were born as well!

What shall I tell you, dear mother,That long ago you should haveGelded these puffed-up ones…

Mother, the state we have come to,We have sunk to the foundations,We have torn up the book of history…

We tore it up, and what is left us?Gurakuqi wholly wasted away,Bajram Curri thirsting for freedom…

They stand together in courtyards,Hand in hand with Zogolli,All of them speaking of victory…

One the murderer, the other the murdered,Both of them stand in front,In museum, city and field…

You will say it is an old time,But I bring you back to the other time,Let us turn the word into deed…

Sala stole, Nano stole,Until the money wore them out,Justice never put poison in their way…

Now come Edi and Basha,Their cooperation becomes a bandageFor the wretched mothers and maidens…

Once they stole each on his own,“I am left behind, friends, left behind”,All of them with a hook in hand…

Thirsty, they pull the branches down,To steal even the last fruit leftOn the mother's body, almost dead…

Mother, when you bore such brave men,Where was that wretched hole foundFrom which these leftover worms came out?

You bore them like the others,Why did they turn out so fouled,That down the centuries they will stink…

They reap here and sow there,One a scoundrel, the other a dandy,Are they bastards, or do they act like them?

Forgive me, mother, for I have tired you,But from what I sowed, these are the harvests,A band of thieves and of rogues…

That is why I pray, why I have come,From London, body and soul frozen,To make the history clean…

Cursed be their birth, cursed the breast,Cursed the table they brought to ruin for you,Take up the spear of the vote today…

Some we shall split, some we shall tear,Many others we shall befoul,Slaughter them in the eyes of the world…

Let us cut off their desire to be king,Take away their trousers and their wallets,For their property belongs to us…Let us leave them naked, as they were born,Let us beat them, for they would not obey,For they stole wherever they were found?

Let us beat them, so they learn once and for all,Not to give birth to more bastardsWho sell the soil and their honour…

Today let us make the vote a bomb,To convince ourselves and the world,That whoever steals the mother loses his head!

No one will tell them, well done,And their name will remain as traitors…These have only the devil for godfather…

May such seed never grow again!