Stars glow like embers in the evening,The lake takes a gentle breath.The night birds out in the forest,Lock their songs inside their nests..
The lake is sleeping, the wave sleeps too,Silence dozes upon a shore.The cricket’s song out in the fields,Finds a path to play its concert...
The moon, stripped bare and naked,Takes fragile, lingering steps.She combs her hair while laughing,And murmurs words upon her lips...
Her eyes in the mirror of the water,She washes with beautiful dreams.Oh beauty that has no equal,Nothing in the world compares to you...
Silence, silence all around,A beauty never felt before.The lovely night begins to weave,A legend yet untold..
I speak to the lake, I speak to the moon,For I am left without a word.Like a child in its mother’s lap,Who will tell the legend now?
But silence reigns everywhere,Only the night all around.Only an owl full of curiosity,Measures its patience with mine...
Across from me lies Pogradec,Full buildings with extinguished lights.Nearby just the crow of a rooster,As if seeking someone, where have they gone?
The monastery on the other side,Inside it Saint Naum himself.Just as young as it is ancient,It has never lost its worth..
I strain my ear to listen from afar,Through the quiet of the night.To decipher from the Bible,To the music of the Judas tree leaves...
I hear a noise, a door swings open,Like the heavy door of a castle.Voices reach me on the wind,Sometimes like dances, sometimes laments...
Oh, alas that I am so far away,That I might hear a little better,If only the sky’s arched dome,Had been a sprawling lake...
If only it were a beehive,Or a much smaller space.So the word would slip out the door,And I could hear it a little better..
I press my ear to the sweet water,It feels like I am deep in a dream.The stones, like the clashing of teeth,Bring me my mother tongue..
Words of stones, words of the wall,Like a psalm from thousands of years.A prayer from the mouth of a man,That fades away before it is spoken...
Eeee hey hey, can you hear me,I shout to them from the other side.You are a piece of our own flesh,Since the most ancient of times...
A moment of silence, then arguing again,The air heavy as an oven.A quarrel and an act of defiance,People bickering with the stones...
I can understand the words of the stone,They belong to my own antiquity.The other voices are muffled in wool,I did not recognize them among mankind...
The voices of the wall are sharp,Just like the walls themselves.Behind them some ragged voices,That I have known well in life...
Some like dogs and some like pigs,That we have met throughout the seasons.Zero in their weight and value,Zero for history too...
What is this, what is happening,The noise spreads through the wind.The wall stays silent, it does not tire,Or it simply won't deal with donkeys...
Because the wall makes the castle,The winds blow in and out.They travel all around,But they never bring down the mountain..
Please forgive me, Lord,A war is waged here every night.The wall speaks ancient words,While the thief demands a toll...
The wicked man strikes the wall,But the wall truly has no mouth:It resembles the body of a man,Who knows how to endure in life...
It does not tire itself speaking more,For its worth is not in the “song”.It did not win its battles with noise,But with the history it holds inside..
A hoarse voice shrieks out loud,A white beard is torn away.One we have never known,Where from, or when it came this way...
Saint Naum steps down from the engraving,He says, I am right here, my man.I quarried them and laid them myself,These thousands of stones in these walls...
And if I speak to them in my tongue,In the song that I used to sing.They step down and recite aloud,All the prayers I nourished them with...
And the walls shake their thousands of shoulders,The earth trembles and the clouds gather.The priests and the monks forget their words,Who have built their nests in it today..
And the walls and the monastery speak,Our foundations are right here.From the forefathers down to the son,And for thousands of centuries we will declare...
The madmen come here out of their minds,The crippled come, and leave on their feet.Our history stands firm in its place,Because its weight is far too heavy...
And the Turks come, and the Slavs come,But we remain through the snow and the summer.They are nothing but slaves to us,Without a foundation, blowing like the wind!
