Entire Poem

Via Politica

I grew up in a big house

where weakness and expressions of joy

deserved punishment.

And I was raised on the via politica

with the grease of yesterday’s glories,

a thick grease collected under arctic skies.

I was lit up. My notebooks, my hair, my heart reeked of

smoke.

That’s when we saw each other clearly.

Or rather, what remained of us.

Damaged like lottery numbers

scratched away with a blade.

How different we were!

Those with round faces were righteous;

those with narrow faces were cautious.

One listened secretly to Puccini,

another to silence, the music’s music.

The oldest one declaimed monologues

inside a ten-by-ten-foot cell

he had built for himself.

And the mysterious one

simply had diabetes.

But how similar we were in severe circumstances!

Alarmed like a flock of magpies

that the smallest stone sends into the sky

toward the mouth of the abyss.

Then it became obvious there wasn’t enough space for everyone.

We separated. Some went on living in via verbum,

telling of what they knew, what they witnessed,

and so, through their narrative,

creating their own grease.

The others crossed over the ocean.

And those in particular who went farthest away

never speak of their annoying history

of wretched survival, burying it

in the darkest crevices on their being.

Unfortunately, as with perfume, its scent

lingers there for much, much longer.

BY LULJETA LLESHANAKU

TRANSLATED BY ANI GJIKA