Four Poems by Irma Kurti

 

THE NAKED DAY


It’s early in the morning, my steps
are heard and all around are asleep.
The shop shutters will open slowly
like eyelids after a restless night.


I am calm and happy, the day’s mine,
I might do with it anything I want;
fill it with many thoughts of light,
rotate it in my hands like a globe.


Then the streets begin to fill
with noises: the horns of the cars,
people hurry up, colliding with me.
The day escapes by my hands at once.


It undresses with the glee with which
I wrapped it. Now on the others it depends.
On its shoulders the stress crashes,
it slips from my fingers like a snake.


No more belongs to me the naked day.





COME BACK TO ME!



Come back to me if you're

not happy, if your days are

lonely, if the four walls of

your house don’t make you happy.




Storms split the skies, and

the lightning is the only

neon that illuminates the

paths; drops of rain beat

now on the roof, imitating

the knocks at the door.

Come back to me tonight!



I collect streams of rain

in my hands like small

ponds and transform

lightning into lamps

to illuminate your road

when you come back to me.





WITHOUT A HOMELAND



What are you looking for on the shore,
shreds of memories or broken shells?
Seagulls to distant lands have flown,
abandoning thus their only love nest.


Just like you, who in a foreign land
tried to build with difficulty a roof.
Although from there, the cold, the rain,
nostalgia, and memories penetrate, too.


Nothing has remained, even that door
you opened in the dream of first love.
It was rusty, now it has been replaced
with a more beautiful and modern one.


You’ve changed also, you’re a sky full
of clouds, hard to recognize yourself—
a sensitive soul, very often deluded;
a sad poetess, left without a homeland.


“Without a homeland”, Transcendent Zero Press, 2019





YOUR VOICE WON’T REACH ME


I don’t know if you will return to this story
as we often do with a book that strikes us,
if you’ll be hurt by thorns involuntarily
as you’ll seek there spring and flowers.


I wonder if its memory will warm you as the sun
and you’ll like to live mentally every season.
Or maybe the sun will seem chilly and pallid,
just like when behind the clouds it is hidden.


Will you feel nostalgia, love, or maybe a gap,
or will you consider it only a forgotten story?
Will you seek me in the poems left all over
or they’re glum, you’ll throw them in a corner?


If you will desire me earnestly as one time,
to join the heart and the body together,
you’ll definitely call me with a loud voice,
forgetting where I am for a single moment.


Minutes will pass and you'll start to worry
for me. I never delayed our meetings.
The fog will begin to dissipate slowly,
suffering will bring down all your feelings.


You will recall that I’m far away, in heaven.
I had told you: “Don’t grieve for me, love.”
Most probably your voice won’t reach me and
no means of transport will bring me close by.

IRMA KURTI is an Albanian poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator and has been writing since she was a child. She is a naturalized Italian and lives in Bergamo, Italy. All her books are dedicated to the memory of her beloved parents, Hasan Kurti and Sherife Mezini, who have supported and encouraged every step of her literary path.

Irma Kurti has won numerous literary prizes and awards in Italy and Italian Switzerland. She was awarded the Universum Donna International Prize IX Edition 2013 for Literature and received a lifetime nomination as an Ambassador of Peace by the University of Peace, Italian Switzerland. In 2020, she became the honorary president of WikiPoesia, the encyclopedia of poetry. She is a member of the jury for several literary competitions in Italy. She is also a translator for the Ithaca Foundation in Spain.

Irma Kurti has published 26 books in Albanian, 21 in Italian, 15 in English, and two in French. She has also translated 16 books by different authors, and all of her own books into Italian and English. Her books have been published in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Kosovo, the Philippines, Cameroon, India, Chile, and Serbia.