To the Poet Azem Shkreli

From the book..."Singers of the Nation"THE EAGLES RETURN TO THE NEST- for the poet Azem Shkreli –In the Rugova GorgeThe oak trees roar,Waterfalls of dreams flow down,Cascading like the washed hair of girlsOver the rugged shoulders of the rocks,The echo enters the lutes,And deep into the shepherds’ flutes...A bleating in the shape of a note,Speaks to the deafness of time.Freedom seeks to climb,It is struck, wounded, but cannot be killed.I know them, and I decipher the melodies,Because on this globe, the gods speak my language...I know the symphonies through the wind,And the hoofbeats on staves and verses,They hold the rocking of cradles on doorsteps...I fall silent, I ask my companion:“Enxhi, do I hear the wind blowing with chants?”“They are not winds,” she tells me,With her full diction,“Armies are passing on horseback,Long, massive caravans,Heading to the high mountains, far beyond,They are laden with saddlebags of thoughts,Gathered through centuries of thunder.”I stand, I listen...I cup my hand to my ear for a majë krahu song,Not to sing myself,But to hear the symphony the clouds strike up.Hoofbeats, rhythm and musicality,A concert on land, in the sky and on the sea...Enxhi tells me:“Azem is calling!”Azem, years ago, planted the day of freedomIn these parts,And the mountains, the shots, the calls, the echoes,Held him, and did not let him be killed...Enxhi takes on the beautiful look of a waterfall,Hair on her shoulders like the cascade of a Niagara,Further on, a bird from the top of an elder tree,Chirps, “Give me back the lyric of a bird”,*The word was left without an answer,Azem Shkreli had come beside us.“Azem... Azem...” I called as loud as I could,My voice climbed, scrambled through the ambushes,I did not see Azem,Only the wings of an Eagle where the light came from...“The angels of the streets”* appeared before us,Entire legions of thought,Legions from which the dawn always comes...“I know a word of stone”,*It is the sworn oath of a man...It is the gunpowder in the tobacco box,Given to a friend for deaths and joys,Given to the brave for sacrifices...I press my ear, I listen slowly,Nearby, “A word is baptized”,*In the great basin of nature.The word itself is baptized,From the depths,The thought emerges from the wave.The sun casts a dappled light upon it,The mountains baptize it, ILLYRIA...The oaks wave their branches,The birds leave their nests,They are the messengers who take to the clouds...Wings dipped in light,High up, far away with the Gods,Braveries speak and sing...The leaves whistle a sound,The mountains raise their knife-ridges high,Azem’s verses ascend into art...Above the mountains there is only sky,Laden caravans of clouds,Among them the poet’s voiceOrchestrating the times...The waters and the greenery speak,Rainbows, colors and arcs,The poet’s thought turned into verses...I call out:“Azem Shkreli, do you welcome guests?”The valley roars deeply,Then two lightning bolts in the background.Two words from Azem Shkreli,Who never treated the laws of art as a caress,With the tip of his pen he painted them, trod them...He rose above the world of poetry,And sang differently to Illyria...We take the road where the light spoke to us,The wedding guest of the word appeared before us,Such a wedding guest I never saw,“Birds and stones” “birds and stones”*...Birds carved into SphinxesIn the mountains of Rugova,Carved by the poet’s chisel,With the thought of the ocean wave...Every rock a monumentWhere the word takes us by the hand,Weaves us through the slopesTo see where the beautiful word,Where does it hide, where is it tucked away?Where did the poet Azem go and find it,Where did he take it, and raise it even higher,For the fortress of beautiful art?A mountain bows its head when it sees us near,Speaks to us like an ancient old man,Seated at the low table, on the stone mound:“Little AzemOften climbed upon my shoulders,Because planted on my shoulder blades,An eagle had its nest in a cave...Azem did not seek the hives,Where the bees buzz with their racket,Even though they hold honey inside,But he climbed upon my shoulders, climbed high...He sought the Eagle’s nest,Which from his footsteps and the echo,Took flight over the mountains,And Azem told it to stop...And he remained facing the sky,Until the sun set on the horizon,He returned home upset,Why he had not climbed even higher...Though a young bird, high, very high,He sought to build his nest in art...He waited, waited for the Eagle to return to the nest,On wings of skies through the clouds,But never wounded and under a bridle...And Azem was pleased:‘The word is a free bird’.*He left verses in the little nest, poems like eggs,And he would leave,He would go down the road to Peja,For beautiful art, in another battle...The verses were little birds,The eagle covered them at night with its wing,Gave them dreams for great flights...Azem climbed on my shoulders every day,Sometimes he was scratched and sometimes hurt,With the Eagle, the verse grew and grew...The verses in poetry and long prose,With the eagle’s birds,Took the wings, the flights of the echo...They conquered the skies, the mountains, the valleys,They clashed with the lightning bolts,They took the light from them,And raised it higher like an Olympic flame,With the strength of Zeus,To withstand the violence of the invader...One day the Eagle did not return,In the sky its eyes left two stars,Those were the days when the invader was broken...But the eagle had not died,Even though it was persecuted all its life,In the nest it had left dozens,Thousands of wings with verses and pages,That conquered the clouds every day...These were Azem’s Eagles,That built a nest upon my shoulder,And rose every day in flight...It looked at the deep Valley of Rugova,Where the laden caravans of Kosovo passed...Those caravans were Eagles in verses,That flew over ridges and doorsteps,They searched, they flew for freedom and peace...And it revived the Eagle spirit,That warmed and raised upon my shoulder,With the gaze, the strength of a falcon...But which Azem,Raised further than the nest where he found it...”In an instant, a roar, a wind,The sky above us begins to fall,Night descends, to sleep upon the mountains and trees...The rock gently lowered its shoulders,With its head high it began to pray...It speaks to us:“Look up at those clouds,There... there... there... theeeeeeeeeeeere... theeeeeeeeeeeereAzem the EagleIs returning to the neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest...”**********************************The words marked with an asterisk... are some of Azem Shkreli’s works.......

PILO ZYBA