My father's poem

(Poema e babait)

Yellowing pages
From the last World War,
Gnawed on, like desperation.

It is my father’s poem, his poor ‘Iliad,’
Published in many a newspaper at the time
And turned into a play... performed
At the Kosova cinema in Tirana... Two old people,
They told me, met at that play
And got married (and they’re not called Helen
Or Paris). Engaged under the occupation...
                        But the partisans
Ordered that the poem be burned,
Should it be found. A hostile leaflet. Against the teachings.
While the guards were unloading banned books
And old newspapers from a truck
At the paper factory,
To make new white paper,
                        as sterile as oblivion,
A friend of mine who worked there
Plunged his hands into the blades
                        of the cutting machine,
Into the mouth of the Minotaur, and surreptitiously
Extracted my father’s poem, once banned, the author
And his works. They had sent them to Hades.
Hidden behind walls of fear, we leafed through it:

"Forget not Çameria and hapless Kosova
They dreamt of freedom, became a dream themselves."

Lines worthy of the nation. Like flies gathering over
The dead body of winter. What are you saying? Save us!

My father
Who art in heaven and under earth...

My father died blind, like a begging Homer,
And my mother stopped sewing during the dictatorship
Me in handcuffs
            they dragged off
                        behind a black car
Within the walls of the New Illyria.