When Biblical peace is ruined
There is impossible sometimes to understand the bridge between night and day
Neither between good and bad
Neither between the right and wrong
Sometimes happens that the streets are confused
And it’s the great evolution colors are invisible
This happens because lights are extinguished in the horizon.
All of a Sudden, just like a theater screen is opened a drape
The stage is empty, dry, cold, dark.
Just as a secret life full of mysteries,
And a sad person confessing himself
Without an end neither a beginning
Engulfed in the context of routine
Without freedom, neither with slavery
It happens at time that human has no horizon
And everything is collapsed
Just as a tsunami that takes upfront everything.
It happens sometimes, human has neither height nor depth
It happens to remember that it was nothing, was no where
Was no one…
In a world that is submerged in its eyes without a horizon.
Says: everything existed as a frightening scream
But happens sometimes, humans want to sit on the ground
below the tree of wisdom.
To see how biblical peace was ruined, when Eden was burned.
—
The girl who loves poetry
She was born in a day when it was not needed,
The city had a bad smell
And birds had fallen in quietness.
The smell of flowers was engulfed by the smell of piss.
Only the noise of airplanes was felt.
Only the noise of airplanes was heard
And whispering of a time’s choir,
Where are found politicians with pockets full of banners.
Within ourselves right on top stays your life
Dreamed every night.
And we, confused, look at her eyes, just as they are depicted on every night.
Those spread memories just as ruined hair
And then we lay many questions,
Questions that lack answers,
Where there are men with cloudy view
And raised hands to the sky begging piety.
Oh God,
In her city, there is much noise.
She loves poetry, but does not read patriotic tales
She drinks black coffee, but with a glass of whisky
She has a dark skirt, but her brain is snow white.
Oh God, what predictions is she listening with open eyes
And the storm’s eyes that see beyond her walls?
Then quietly looks for the end of objects without meeting the road of exit
Just as words are exhausted through the mind of a poet,
She wants to build babel’s tower
In one day when bricks are hitting through her fingers.
—
In the city of a cloud
In the city of cloud everything is different.
Thoughts are enclosed just as our deception through statues.
There flowers live a life of bushes,
And within them dance freely only insects
My God,
The city of cloud has its narrow streets,
And its thoughts are narrow
And the song of Halleluiah is not heard.
There is no room for exhaustion
Through exhausted feet is extended
And the word tries in vain to defend the corrupt dignity.
Spiders have set their webs
And rudiments of a mind are turned into a night romance, romance of time.
In the city of cloud the theater’s lights are shut
And shows are made under the pressure of candles that fight with darkness
Poetry is read in the corners of sorrow
Where only dogs with flees walk in quietness.
Where nastiness of politics has ruined everything,
Up to the birds sounds and kisses of loved ones.
In the city of clouds, dust has covered flowers.
And in the middle there is a lake of ignorance
Where freedom and war have no borders,
Where poetry and non-poetry have no borders.
Where there are stolen many pains
That run through the sky and turned into food
For the hungry stomach of politics.
Just as our solitude through vibrating legs
That is disrupted in flooded roads
With men walking endlessly,
With men walking endlessly.
Since then it begun to be miss counted,
Since then it begun to be bent,
Since then it begun to turn into evil
In the city is felt the sky’s lack “City of God.”
—
A boat on a waive
It’s Saturday and a cold march
The roads are shining from frost, the city is quiet
Sounds are frightening, like mountains scream from lightening.
Cold flowers have the color of a frozen sound,
Nothing is shining, neither aroma, neither sound, neither a word.
We are going to the sea,
Where there is a sole boat and a masked captain.
He leaves behind quietness and departs towards for the coast
To throw himself in the mysteries of turbulent waives.
You are following with imagination its path
When she moves through the stormy waives.
A thunder is heart….
Asking surprised, why did it leave the quietness of the coast?
Looking confused with the eyes covering the color of ice
And reminds the worst tail.
The boat becomes smaller, the waves are growing
And the sky is furious.
It Saturday, cold march
Flowers are freezing just like your memory
Which leaves behind quietness and thrown in the waves of life,
There is an abyss amidst desires and reality
Between you and breathless reality, life, time…
On the earth full of thirst.
—
In a train station
Crowds of people
Run towards many directions
Some of them have a luggage
Some embody confusion in their eyes
Some waiting for the train
And a few returning to Ithaca like Odysseus
Everyone is found to be in one place
Where they depart to different directions.
However they all have the same purpose
The lives’ walk
O God, the unknown lives’ walk.
You are cleaning the front head and with a sweet voice, asking
Who is the walk?
Odysseus when returning to Ithaca,
Understood that Ithaca was far away from his dreams
Everything had changed, except his memories.
Ithaca did not remember his heroism
She was not Ithaca of Odysseus’ dreams.
—
(Translated from Albanian by Peter Tase)
About the Poet
Ndue Ukaj (1977) is an Albanian writer, publicist and literary critic.
His poems has been included in several anthologies of poetry, in Albanian, and other languages. He has published several books, including “Godo is not coming”, which won the national award for best book of poetry published in 2010 in Kosovo. He has also won the award for best poems in the International Poetry Festival in Macedonia and another prize. His poems and texts are translated into English, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish and Chinese. Ukaj is member of Swedish PEN.
About the Translator
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