Today, I offer you some more poetry from A New Map: The Poetry of Migrant Writers in Italy , edited by Mia Lecomte and Luigi Bonaffini.
In this selection, Albanian writer Gezim Hajdari’s poetry speaks of the necessity of reinvention in every new place the migrant may find him or herself. What is real? How do we build a bridge from where we come from and where our feet, out of necessity , find themselves? How can one continue to become someone new over and over again? How forgiving are our adopted lands of memories that haunt, that nostalgia that holds the heart hostage? Gezim Hajdari has been a political exile in Italy since 1992. Recurring themes in his work are journeys and solitude. These poems have been translated from the Italian by Michael Palma.
Quanto Siamo Poveri (How Poor We Are)
How poor we are
I in Italy living hand to mouth
You in our homeland do without ,drink a black coffee
Our crime: we love
Our sentence :living alone divided
By dark water
I’ll come back in the call like Constantine
In our native hills have already gathered the oregano
That I’ll bring with me to my still empty room
Now I’m living in place of myself
far away from that land that pitilessly
devours its own children
With my nights bor of your days
I’ll arrive at your dry borders
I , survivor of dictatorships
of the disregard of every liberty
I’ll knock at you as at a holy city
forbidden to infidels.
Ogni Giorno Creo Una Nuova Patria (Every Day I Establish a New Country)
Every day I establish a new country
where I die and am reborn
a country with no maps or flags
on famous for your deep eyes
that follow me all the time
in my journey toward fragile heavens
in every land I go to sleep in love
in every residence I wake newborn
this key of mine can open every lock
and the doors of every dark prison
endless returns and partings my existence
from flame to flame from water to water
the anthem of my countries the blackbird song
that I sing in all seasons of the waning moon
risen from you brow of dark starts
with the eternal will of the sun god.
