Glosses On Two Poems By The Albanian Poet Petro Marko (1913-91) Poem by Anthony Weir

1. SUCH BURDENS ON THE MIND


'Marrezi, turp
turp dhe mëkate
per jeten e tërbuar...'
- APOLOGJIA IME (JETES)


Shame and rage
greed and pain:
life is a gaoler
bejewelled and vain.

Life made misery.
Life made Man.
In the wastes of desire
the grotesque can-can.

...as faliu ligjes sime,
bindu i çmendur endërrtar...


'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich...? '

How can it possibly matter in which language I am unread?
Or, even if read, not understood?
The warmth and the words of the dead are my comfort,
the greatest intimacy our grief beyond time
and its terror and hatred and bitterness.

Along the valley of death I've always been walking
and listening to the blood-pools talking,
bones and bonfires everywhere,
black and blue and red in the air.
Poisoned the water, bitter the rain.
Life itself is in love with pain.

Our comfort-manufactured metal hearts dissolve in rust
so that 'Old myths renew as passionate as dusk.'

...të shpirtit, në një kend,
lindi një shqetësim
që çeli varrin tënd...


If 99% of the ever-expanding Universe is unknowable
Dark Matter (The True God)
and an infinitesimal percentage of the remaining 1% is the
living matter we are so intent on corrupting and destroying,
the whole of life is the tiniest blemish
on the otherwise marvellous Universe,
no matter how many billions of synapses are in my brain,
no matter that life itself is in love with pain.



2. FLYING OVER EUROPE

Above us the blue.
Beneath us an old, old map.
I cannot see the borders or the armies
only rivers and forests.
The machine we are in
(eating sandwiches which taste of Treblinka and Gulag)
wipes through the mildew
wipes through the blight
of history. Those millions
of terrible events might not have happened.
But they are still happening now
out of sight, day and night.
Good news is something misreported.