GAZMEND KRASNIQI
And you, who are
Translated from Albanian Ukë Buçpapaj
1.
HISTORY
We fall silent when the reflections on the panes
of time, where we pass our rickety days, try to persuade us
they still resemble their former selves –
say, a silhouette, a nervous tic.
The small things can’t possibly know if something happened
at night, while we were sleeping: if somewhere in an experiment
they mixed us up with others in the universe – or else,
which comes to the same, they mixed up our world.
¬¬Nor can they console themselves with the notion
that the present is only a technical glitch in the universe.
All we can do for them is behave
as if all this were only an art lesson:
when you’re close you leap, excited; when you’re far,
you stand aside, heart in hand, and write,
saying you know what you’re doing with your fate –
a generous heart with a miser’s hand,
in this world where trees may mock gravity
but cannot enter history as we do.
2.
IF WE KNOW EVERYTHING, WHY DO WE STILL SPEAK
The summer’s road roller slid past, yet left us breathless.
No time – and then the very first thought
seizes the mind: the heroes step out
from the thicket of night; for the glory of the dead gods,
they display the first fruits, the must,
rust-coloured in the goblet of the sky,
and the army of trees sends word to the city:
‘I’ve come!’ No time – whoever drinks
the nectar of the gods, even dead, thinks, ‘It is true:
the autumn river, pounding on the banks,
in the mirrors of shadows and stars, in the words
of images, so fleeting, like islands
of sound and light.’ Until
another silence blows through the world, where
a man sits and asks, ‘If we know everything,
why do we still speak?’ His eyes – two cubs –
invent enchantment.
3.
IN THE MANNER OF G. K.
Eternity, don’t leave this day
that suits me so well,
where now the cicada’s song
drowns the concrete mixer’s roar –
then it’s the other way round.
We drowned them both
when we sang while making pancakes
and, heroically,
added a little cheese,
but it isn’t the clash of heroes
out there – just a tin
cheering on the meagre raindrops.
Only an apathetic ant bears witness
that I sat at this table.
Eternity, don’t leave this day,
that’s cut to my measure.
In the TV window: microbes, quakes,
accidents and nuclear provocations.
In the room’s window: clouds and birds.
In the window of the self, a man
closes the ledger of lost fluids
and paves the road along which dreams arrive,
where suddenly he meets the old tax collector
for a moment only,
so that we recall,
once again,
for just a moment,
how the true heart beats in the chest.
Lini një Përgjigje