combatting normality

 

NINE SHORT POEMS

by

Ferdinand Laholli
translated from the Albanian by Zana Banci and Anthony Weir

Born in 1960, Mr Laholli lived the first thirty years of his life in an Internment Camp.
He has published ten books of poetry since settling in Germany in 1990
and now lives in Bückeburg.

 

click for Biography

and for
albanian versions
kliko këtu për versionin shqip

PRETENDING

I am afraid to hear
and see

You are afraid to hear
and see

They are afraid to hear
and see.

We all pretend
that we know all about the world.

 

 

WE ARE SHADOWS

We are shadows
dragged
over ignorance.

Perhaps we once were people
now replaced
by shadows.

 

 

TIME PRESENT

The shirt of my dreams
was shredded
by the sun
of waiting.
My skin
feels
the sting
of nothing.

 

 

THE WORKERS' PARTY OF ALBANIA

The killer
comes for our dreams,
amnesiac
because he doesn't like
corpses.

 

 

THE SAVRA INTERNMENT CAMP
[where Mr Lakolli languished for his first 30 years]

Here you are afraid to speak,
afraid to be silent.
Here you are afraid to smile,
afraid to be sad.
Here you are afraid
not to be afraid.

 

 

HERE

Here the law
is the eye of death
encompassing
all Albania.
Here the people
cringe more and more cravenly
lest they are ever noticed.

 

 

FEAR

Fear
reveals
the chasm
of error.
You must kill
your self
to save yourself
from fear.

 

 

PENITENTIAL

I banged
my head
to calm myself
and now
it aches
from endurance.

 

 

THE SUICIDE OF LEAVES

They long
to turn to gold
and now they fall
one
by one,
wailing.

 

FOUR SHORT POEMS

by

Irhan Jubica
translated from the Albanian by Zana Banci and Anthony Weir

Born in the northern town of Shkodra (Shkodër, Scutari) in 1973, Mr Jubica has been editor of several newspapers and periodicals and is now editor of the literary magazine ARS.

 

click for Albanian versions
kliko këtu për versionin shqip

LATE

Now it is late
late

to start
and to finish

It is late to love
and to hate

There are so few things
from when I was a little boy
so few
to wrap in a wizened
apple-skin

 

 

WINTER

The sun is blinded
by the dirty words
exchanged between the days
and the usurping years

 

 

SOLITUDE

It has cost me dear
to wrest my solitude from God
Alone, death saves me from insanity
Alone, I am not God
- but God goes on his knees begging
to become like me

 

 

THE PROMISE

Unfinished dream
of returning to the world of flowering
the sand is dead

From long ago
the first voice
you
and only you
but tonight
do not dare to revive me

small barge

I have forgotten
all the fantasies
and bad jokes of existence

but my end is not yet come
and you can't go

I am the Nile
now dry after
giving life to millions