Epilogue to a Shabby lifetime
By Alisa Velaj
Translated from Albanian: Arben P. Latifi
I'd persistently asked him to prune that tree in the yard,
the only one they had had there for years;
to one morning hack off the shrubbery
that had climbed up nearly half the tree height
Nonetheless, he never ever lifted a finger...
Look how perfect the trees all around are, I'd urge him;
no wild weed or bramble strangle their trunks!
Don't you think such a sight only couples your sadness,
daily as you open your eyes?!
He never ever lifted a finger, nonetheless...
All he'd tell me was that birds would perch there;
that if he cut away the shrubbery,
thefeathered souls would lose a shelter...
He would thus sit brooding on a stool in mid-yard
and preach on the happiness he was deprived of,
while he'd yearn for it like a blindman for eyesight.
Not a short time has flown by since then.
Countless flocks have roamed the skies end to end.
Flights and tweets, sleepy like babies,
have lounged on trees pruned and unpruned,
while the man, who never dared to displease the birds,
sat motionless on the stool facing the shrubbery.
Whining all the time about illusivehappiness...
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Alisa Velaj was born in 1982 in the port town of Vlora, Albania. She was shortlisted for the annual international Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in UK in June 2014. Her works have appeared in more than 100 print and online international magazines in Europe, UK, USA, Australia etc. Velaj's poetry book Dreams is published by Cyberwit Press in India Besides English, her poems have also been translated into Hebrew, Swedish, Romanian, French, and Portuguese. Her poetry collection With No Sweat At All is scheduled for publication by Cervena Barva Press in May 2020.
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