Fatos Arapi

Those who have no food,
When they dream of food,
Let them think of you and me.
Those who have no fire,
When they dream of fire,
Let them think of you and me.
The insomniacs of this world
With their eyes wide open like the night,
In the depth of their nights,
Let them think of you and me.
Those who have perished
And who still love -
Let them think of you and me.

(1970)
...

Like the linden tree, words spread their fragrance through the twilight,
Deep in the words I have spoken,
As in the depths of the Ionian,
I see my face.
...

Little Mother

Mother has shrunk,
As if constantly stooping,
My heart quivers,
So brittle, so tiny...
Almost as if she were my child,
...

On the shoulders of my times
I rested my head.
I did not sleep. I did not doze.
On the shoulders of my times,
As on Her shoulder
I was lost in thought.
...

I arose and left my grave.

In the darkness I sought you,
Holding a lamp.
In my hand,
Three bright daffodils.

Please, fill my eyes
With your smile.

It was for you I left my grave.
...

Ancient confusion in those wise,
those fond eyes...
Beside a car, beneath a traffic light,
Elegant, glistening in the sun
and the wind.
They neigh,
The brothers of Pegasus. Volatile,
As if spewed from the bowels of the earth.
With dazzling tassels on their brows
they snort,
The coursers of Kosova.
...

I am leaving without saying good-bye to the sea.

This one time
I did not foray to those familiar banks to bid farewell
To the gulls. I can no longer bear their absence.
Perhaps I am growing old,
...

The two of us were once
Like sky and sea:
If one clouded over, the other grew dark,
...

They are constantly entering poems,
day and night.
They do not wait for the heavy gates to be opened
By intellectual love, by refined, delicate thinking.
...

Sultan Murat sat astride his steed
And observed the prisoner bound hand and foot:
His advanced age, his wounds, his chains...
‘Albanian,' he inquired, ‘Why do you fight
When you could live differently?'
‘Because, Padishah,' replied the prisoner,
‘Every man has a piece of the sky in his breast,
And in it flies a swallow.'
...

Autumn has poured its colours into my soul.

The colours of my soul
I have decanted
Into the coming days.
...

You will come, my beloved, will you not?
Because you know I am waiting for you,
Listening to the heavy breath of evening,
Listening to the whisper of the wait,
...

Life is a railway station of partings and meetings.
We are constant travellers,
Holding in our hands our inseparable baggage,
A little suitcase
Of struggles, onslaughts and memories.
...

I dived into the waters of the Ionian Sea,
Into its hues and light.
I swim in a blaze of mirages,
...

I met you in my future,
In its din and clamour
I created you,
My beloved! I looked like a flash of light
That always goes forward
And never goes back.
...

I dislike Achilles,
He's a looming threat, majestic
and fatal,
With winged feet he comes and goes
In the pallid agony of Troy.
I mourn for his mother, Thetis,
The goddess of my sea.
But I dislike Achilles,
His thundering wrath.
And I myself am Hector
With that cruel spear piercing my breast
At the Scaean Gates.
To budding mankind
I leave three sanguine words
Fatherland... Freedom... and from numbed lips,
Andromache!
...

With you in my arms, with you in my arms,
Dear and frigid, where to inter you?
Within my mind? You shunned that place,
Within my soul? It cannot be there.
...

History has frozen over,
It marches and moves not from the spot
...

Where is that old man who used to sit
Over there, at the table near the window,
Frank as his posture,
Oblivious to his loneliness,
In front of a cup of coffee,
Plunged into eternal conversation with you?

With the smile of an ancient statue,
Though statues do not move from the spot,
He got up and departed,
Conscious like the wear and tear of time.

... conscious like fading light.

(1989)
...

On my desk
The bust of Hera,
Fair mother of the Gods.
Under her pensive glance
Fashioned - I don't know how,
Lies half an aspirin.

(15 September 1990)
...