Red Shift

The land of my ancestors taught me the Art of Flight,
The arc of eyes across the sea
And of roots from the mountain ridges,
The land of my fugitive forefathers
Taught me the value of our word of honour and of myths,
The one, an anchor for the soul, the other, a yoke for the body.
Centuries later you changed,
You are but a childless soil, all have departed,
A land of old men, fathers beyond History and Time,
Flight of the Nation now singes my face
With the fiery icons of Onufri,
There is no more Hell to flee from,
No more Heaven to gain.

[Red Shift, from the volume Last Exit to Bukura Morea, Castrovillari: Il Coscile, 2003, p. 34. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]