The prison shower room

(Banjoja e të burgosurve)

We, the prisoners,
Slip out of the black mine
Like twilight shadows from the grave.

We put out our oil lamps,
Throw aside our boots,

And hustle off to the shower room.

Water - the only warmth we have,
Like rain blessed by the heavens,
Pours over our naked bodies.

You wash the exhaustion,
The insults,
The mire of death off your ribs,
Sublime pleasure,
Standing in the steam,
As if in the realm of sleep
You suddenly see yourself
In a dream...
You rub your shoulders,
Scrub your arms, belly and thighs,
Finding nothing foreign on you,
            neither claws,
            nor horns.
The shower weeps a torrent of tears
Over feeble, wounded,
            blackened,
            bodies.
You revel,
Are bewildered,
Could faint for joy,
Fall in love with the water
As it glides over and envelops your body
Like a woman.

And you feel
You have not been abandoned entirely,
Not by the snow which melts
And fills the mighty rivers.

Far from the sea
Are the prisons,
Full of dead waves of life.
Then come the clouds on high,
And then the rain,
Washing the naked nation - a prisoner's body.

The beloved water licks me with its tongue,
Soothing me all over.
The shadow of the barbed wire,
            like a tattoo on a slave,
Stretches sombre on my skin
And I wash and wash,
And fall into another reality,
            Einstein,
            lunar.

Now I can fly
Far, far away...
Vaporized pain.

(Qafë-Bari prison camp, July 1983)