Rami Saari
And it’s always that time of morning
when they play folksongs,
thus renouncing
the ethnic minorities,
when we have to wake up in order to hear you
through a multitude of shepherds’ flutes,
through skirts embroidered
in mountain paths,
behind hands
holding fishing nets
and feet crushing grapes in the wine press
or kneading doe for your breads.
And from the latitude of this peninsula,
with its twelve districts
and thirty six sub-districts, tired as a hunted animal,
I’ve kept an eye on you, after
you’d shut one door after another in my face
and burnt nearly all my bridges.
If this were in any other language, from some vast
place in a big world, my life would
have most probably settled
in some good and convenient spot,
but nights are lain down
in sounds, days are harnessed to my calamity,
while you, homeland, keep exiling me over and over again.
You are a wound constantly shoved at finger,
a finger that is a ring.
Translated from Hebrew by Irit Sela, Sha’ar International Poets’ Festival, Haifa, 2013
ALBANIAN POETRY translated by Saari to Hebrew
ALBANIAN PROSE translated by Saari to Hebrew
Rami Saari’s page