Ismail KADARE
Biografia
POETRY
Poetry,
How did you find your way to me?
My mother does not know Albanian well,
She writes letters like Aragon, without commas and periods,
My father roamed the seas in his youth,
But you have come,
Walking down the pavement of my quiet city of stone,
And knocked timidly at the door of my three-storey house,
At Number 16.
There are many things I have loved and hated in life,
For many a problem I have been an 'open city',
But anyway...
Like a young man returning home late at night,
Exhausted and broken by his nocturnal wanderings,
Here too am I, returning to you,
Worn out after another escapade.
And you,
Not holding my infidelity against me,
Stroke my hair tenderly,
My last stop,
Poetry.
[Yalta 1959]
[Poezia, from the volume Vjersha dhe poema zë zgjedhura, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1966, p. 27, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 76]
Childhood
My childhood - ink-stained fingers,
Bells in the morning,
The muezzin at dusk,
Collections of cigar boxes and old stamps,
Trading one Ceylon
For two Luxembourg.
Thus they passed,
Childhood days,
Chasing after a rag ball, raising dust and cries,
A rag ball,
Made of grey Albanian rags.
[1958]
[Fëminia, from the volume Shekulli im, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1961, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 77]
And when my memory
And when my fading memory,
Like the after-midnight trams,
Stops only at the main stations,
I will not forget you.
I will remember
That quiet evening, endless in your eyes,
The stifled sob upon my shoulder,
Like snow that cannot be brushed off.
The separation came
And I departed, far from you.
Nothing unusual,
But some night
Someone's fingers will weave themselves into your hair,
My distant fingers, stretching across the miles.
[Edhe kur kujtesa, from the volume Shekulli im, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1961, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 78]
Longing for Albania
I was filled with longing for Albania
Tonight as I returned home on the trolley,
The smoke of a Partizani cigarette in the hand of a Russian
Curled bluish, twirled upwards
As if whispering to me, its compatriot,
In the language of the Albanians.
I long to stroll through the streets of Tiranë in the evening,
Where I used to get into mischief,
And through the streets where I never got into mischief.
Those old wooden doorways know me,
They will still hold a grudge against me
And will snub their noses at me,
But I won't mind
Because I am filled with longing.
I long to stroll through the lanes full of dry leaves,
Dry leaves, autumn leaves,
For which comparisons can so easily be found.
I was filled with longing for Albania,
For that great, wide and deep sky,
For the azure course of the Adriatic waves,
For clouds at sunset ablaze like castles,
For the Albanian Alps with their white hair and green beards,
For the nylon nights fluttering in the breeze,
For the mists, like red Indians, on the prowl at dawn,
For the locomotives and the horses
That huff and puff, dripping in sweat,
For the cypresses, the herds and graves
I was filled with longing.
I was filled with longing
For the Albanians.
I was filled with longing and swiftly journey there,
Flying over the mists, as over desires.
How far and how beloved you are, my country.
The airport will tremble with the droning,
The mists will hang in suspense over the chasms.
Surely those who invented the jet engine
Must have been far from their country once.
[Moscow 1960]
[Malli i Shqipërisë, from the volume Shekulli im, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1961, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 79]
The cataracts
The cataracts cascade downwards
Like spirited white horses,
Their manes full of foam and a rainbow of hues.
But suddenly, at the edge of the gorge,
They fall on their forelegs,
They break, oh, their white legs,
And die at the foot of the rocks.
Now in their lifeless eyes
The frozen sky reflects.
[Kataraktet, from the volume Vjersha dhe poema zë zgjedhura, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1966, p. 30, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 81]
The old cinema
Old cinema,
Abandoned cinema
Where no films, not even reruns, have been shown for a long time,
Where the audiences no longer make a clatter with their seats,
Where peanuts are no longer sold
At intermission.
The stained screen,
The broken speakers,
The empty seats like lines unwritten.
Pensive and full of nostalgia
I stare from the doorway
At this poem of seats, long and abandoned.
Childhood cinema,
Tumbledown cinema,
I've seen so many countries,
I've seen so many auditoriums,
But none of them have I entered with such joy
As you,
Shabby old cinema,
Wonderful and precious to me!
Nowhere have I felt better,
Not in luxurious halls of shining velvet,
With a couple of blondes at my side.
To you I come
In the company of a gypsy or two.
Coins, coins,
Money collected with difficulty,
Jingling merrily at the ticket-booth,
The posters by the mosque
And by the Bazaar Cafe
Drawn by Qani the doorman himself.
One poster said:
'Soviet film',
Another for the same film said:
'Czech film',
But no one really cared,
We forgave you everything,
Dear old
Cinema.
On that bit of screen
We saw a bit of the whole world,
For the first time.
On six square metres
The world had no limits,
The world was splendid
Even though the screen was patched up.
We too were patched up,
Patched up was the Republic,
Time, elbows, States were patched up,
But the glossiest of screens
Had never seen
A sparkle like the one
In our eyes.
Old cinema,
Abandoned cinema,
Seats where childhood days
Sat in rows.
Childhood days,
Always chattering,
Like a row of birds
On a telephone wire.
Old cinema,
Abandoned cinema,
Heavy, long and sunken seats.
As old as I get,
Wherever I go,
Like a porter I'll carry them
With me, those seats.
[Kinemaja e vjetër, from the volume Vjersha dhe poema zë zgjedhura, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1966, p. 35, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 82]
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