POETRY

The poems below were included in the 2007 Fall contest organized by "KUVENDI" Magazine of Michigan. "MIGJENI"prize was awarded to Rozi for best poetry in English.


THE BLACK MONA LISA

Mona Lisa at the Louvre
Flew from her frame’s kingdom of five hundred years
Falling into the 21-st century
To set off to Haiti, to Port-au-Prince
To meet her pretty dual identity
The graceful Yona:
A surgeon, a swimmer, a tennis and basketball player
Thy passion, thy miracle, thy secret of a cosmic beauty
Thy secret of mystery…over-soul…eternity…
Thy power of her sincere, black, almond eyes, where
The planets pulsate.

x x x
Mona and Yona—a moving picturesque divinity
The one dressed in Florentine aristocratic plush
The other in green cotton for surgery
(Leonardo’s curiosity about human anatomy)
Mona and Yona…a cherry- bob…both French speakers
The white one shaded in a lace veil
The black one with braids and sneakers
Mona—a reader of Petrarch’s sonnets
Yona—a vessel of postmodernism
In spite of this
Two models of perfect feminine beauty
White and black silk skin in light and shade silhouette
Walking intertwined between centuries in eternal calm
The Old World’s queens and empresses behind them—come
Both followed by Da Vinci—unveiling
Their enigmatic smiles
For eternity.


THE NEW ENGLAND FALL

The rosy Autumn
Returns ritual rhythm of the red New England,
The wild cherries, the oak forest, the maple and the beeches
Shake their red and golden beards
On mushy piles of leaves at the roots of the trees
Combing, trimming and embellishing themselves
At the crystal-mirror-lakes of Maine’s hills.

The cool air is wafting a kiss
To the night Fall—waiting
For a short date with the dwindling day…
The squirrels
Welcome each other for the Fall’s dining
Using two hand-paws unshelling and chewing
Testing,
The wild chestnut with hedgehog fruit.
The Bronze Butterfly- Fall- Migration
Follows the journey Canada-Mexico
The cosmic dust of her wings—secular echo
Of the sounds of the rivers—the Indians’ canoes,
The raven’s caws
The wood-rumble axes…
The ocean’s waves arching in wide swaths
Incandescent the green specter of
The sun’s rays pecking
Through ruined clouds tearing each other’s hair…
On the seaside – foot prints of humans and dogs
Alternating—visible or not
By the shifting dune of the sand at Cape Cod.
Under the platinum night sky.
While Boston city sleeps,
At Diamond’s Beach
A white gull wing feather – falls and flares into the sand
Chanting with stars.



E P I P H A N Y

My dear grandson John
I know how much you love
Watching geese flying in the sunny sky
But the story I want to tell
Happened on an overcast winter day.
There is a pitiful honk in the air.
I lightly touch my face
On the window glass
The snowstorm left a blanket of fluffy white
The white lake has turned to ice.
The dead of winter.
Sixth of January!
I remember Albania’s Epiphany in my small village
Somewhere between snowy mountains
To a thick, iced river
(named Jordan every sixth of January)
Although faithful villagers
Singing “Jesus was baptized,”
And breaking the river’s ice
In a circle large enough,
For the priest to immerse the silver cross into the water.
There is a pitiful honk in the air.
Early today,
A mournful morning of misty gray
On the whiteness of the freezing lake
Near the shore
A crowd of numbed geese
That slept all night long on the glacier,
With bodies oriented to the east
As if stretched by a magnetic field
Looking like a winter sculpture.
Their claws—fixed, nailed on tight
Like black hieroglyphics on the ice,
Moving only brown heads and white chins
Honking, honking and crying, crying…ing…
(Last October they didn’t make
The winged migration from north to south.
An unlucky goose had its wing break, so
They all stayed to survive the stinging cold,
The brutality of a New England winter.)
There is a pitiful honk in the air.
By a fatalist’s logic, in nature’s history
These birds, hot-blooded beings
Couldn’t resist living near the beach
In a dangerous situation in the bleak midwinter.
An iced film divided fishes underneath
From hungry, bone-chilling, cold geese up there
In the chilly air.
There is a pitiful honk in the air.
Spreading their brown and gray wings
Geese curve their numbed shapes
Nip the iced snow between nails and claws
Slash their toes
Help themselves and each other
Pat wing to wing and feet to feet
Follow their gentle leader one by one in disorder
Move, shake, fall, like bad ice-dancers.
Their crooked feet make a noise on the ice
Like gopher’s paws over yellow, dried grass.
There is a pitiful honk in the air.
My heart is crushed by pain.
A white sky—watches regretful, the same,
Look at poor birds half dead—half alive.
…Dear Sun, we can’t see you all the time
But you observe us from afar.
The compassionate Sun—pulled out its fiery sphere
Between thick, gray clouds
Melts ice on the lake’s surface
Creates a hole as big as a goose’s body.
One by one the geese take a bath in the small puddle
A baptism! They discharge into the water their ache, fear, anxiety and ice.
Hopeful honks fill the air!
Vivacious geese climb on top of a black rock
Partly-covered by snow—Pandalike
Try to expand their wings and fly without fear,
A small, gray aggregate cloud
The airborne letter “V”—victory!
Show their white chins and bellies
Their triumphant music cutting sounds
Beautify the atmosphere
Flying…flying far away…
A climax, the community they belong to
Their habitat, relationships, security, survival,
Blessed be thee…A-le- lu- ia…!
While I watch the wild geese
Disappear into the horizonYou,
John, my three year old grandson,
Are asleep in frigid Freiburg, Germany,
Perhaps you dream
About the wild geese—in agony!
My Godchild, your name
Is the same:John the Baptist,
Don’t forget January sixth
The miracle this day can fix.

TWO HALVES

Midnight.
Half of my bed
a white shroud
Lit by a half
Moon that casts a cold look at me
I want to sleep, but can’t…
A half Moon…
Its other half lights my mother’s grave
Far off…in the Balkans.
Half pensive—half delirious…
I cry in halves
Separated by
The dividing line of centuries.
Half despair
Half hope…half here—half there,
We are one in the semidarkness of a half—severed Moon…
2001

SUMMER IN NAHANT

Day time
Nahant makes the sun envious
Exposing her unbuttoned breast.
As night falls, the sky
Embellishes her—painting lips and cheeks
With sunset’s purple beams.
All night long
She hides her face
Kissing the ocean.

P L A T O N I C L O V E

(Dedicated to my daughter and her husband)

Summer
On the beach
He tramples
Following in
Her footprints
On soaked sand
Seeking the sentiment
The caress, the freshness
Of her skin.
In winter
She walks
In the imprint
Left by
His footsteps
In the snow
Dipping into his warmth
In every season warm waves wrap
Around her legs.
Unknown to one another there can be
Nothing else.
Nothing…until Spring…