Trance
       for my friend, the poet Osman Gashi

The dervishes' power!
In a trance
They can make tanks prance about
In a Prizren ring-around-the-rosy,
Mortars aimed at Kosovar breasts
Can do no harm
If Kosova holds its breath.

[Trance, from the volume Last Exit to Bukura Morea, Castrovillari: Il Coscile, 2003, p. 98. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]