Three Poems by Irena Dragoti

Absence of Mother

Evening is coming: I catch my breath

a branch of basil, or a little menderz

hide under the pillow

to sprout dreams with longing wings

from the Motherland,

for Mother...

Her shadow is white on my hair;

absence like a good cough,

lasts three months

and repeated four times.

Memories are signs,

that the past has chased me away.

I undid the fetus from the girl.

I live it divided between two sunsets.

I surrendered to the drying up of prayers.

My mother was taken hostage

from thought,

that I didn’t win all the battles

to keep him alive.

Wherever I open the leaves, mother’s grave

it is the chain that keeps me connected to the roots.

I am not the ideal daughter...

□

Invisible

In this big city without a center

the walking beauty

tiptoe, on the empty streets

it is not news...

She is like a shooting star

the day for the sun,

without any desire in the arms.

How did I know?

That beauty here is not presence

but a whirl in the orbits of the self;

an unspoken word knows how much...

It is a mist that hangs in the sky

hide the roads,

wear the light...

... conveyed by missing eyes

and until the desire for the parade dies

don’t ask him where he was...

I’m sorry, about the roads.

□

Damn World 

The dead sleep

the last sleep.

With the tombstone, time knocks.

The living do not speak

and at the edge of the dilemma

the neuron of oblivion, knocking on the bed.

The wise measure

with skin tone

a lost battle, bottom line.

The fools don’t stop

with the power of emptiness.

They overcome courage, without being afraid of fate.

Humanity sees obliquely.

It is the age of retreat;

the twenty-first century, the devil’s march.

And the world burns;

he lost his words

under the wet palate...

The world is dams;

how close his age is ?!

Let me rest, I’m embarrassed.

□

- Irena Dragoti

Lushnje

Irena Dragoti, poet, was born and lived in Lushnje, where she finished high school. She completed her university studies at the Faculty of Education Sciences in Elbasan, at “Aleksandër Xhuvani” University. She practiced the teaching profession for 22 years and then moved to Michigan, USA. She works more on lyrical poetry and finds herself in free verse. The first volume of poetry was “Fleeing season” and after it “A month of time” and “Escape to the pole”. She has in process her fourth book. She has also written essays and literary criticism. She has published poems, essays and poetry cycles in newspapers inside and outside the borders of Albania, such as: Exlibris magazine, Tirana Diplomat, Observer Cult, Nacional, Autunis Poetry, Telegraf supplement, Hejza, Gazeta Dielli, World Literature, Pen Craft, Literary Gazette, Hejza etc. For Irena, poetry is life itself in the written version, it is her freedom.