Azem Shkreli was born in 1938 and it can be said (and must be said!) that he is the most “Shkreli” of his Shkrelis.

 

Already in the sixties of the last century he surprised with the "Blossom" and especially the "The White Caravan". He then climbed the stairs to our low literary heaven and kept raising the heads of the crowd, despite greedy reproaches and the occasional criticism.

 

But he was merely doing the writer's job: deepening the impression, giving the thought a clear direction and creating an unquestioned identity with the power of the word and making our Albanian language feel comfortable in his metaphors.

 

In the architecture of poetic thought he opened his own cadence and at the end of his poetic work he condensed the footnote with devotion and especially originality.

 

Azem Shkreli died "as if he were playing" in 1997 - leaving his farewell written in stone next to his head - in case anyone needs it. If not, he still has no bitterness towards anyone.

 

That's the way he was.

 

 

 

Exile

 

Why didn't we get the nights

The people, the shores, the rocks

Why didn’t we get them

 

You took us

Road hunger, took us

 

All that's left is

Leaving and

Grunting to remain

 

 

Four twenty-five

 

At four twenty-five

Roads can come and go, they can

Give birth to children beautiful as grass

 

In four twenty-five

Let the war end, let the waters flow

A book should be written, nothing should be repeated

 

It could be Saturday after a whole Friday

Loneliness and waiting, curse and waiting, a river

Should give up bifurcation

 

You can hear night music, you can cry

You can love and die like

Never again

 

At four twenty-five when

Meteors sleep.

 

Outline for obituary

 

When the roads regrets

When the candle burns its own day

 

When you sleep forever

This verse of mine in a shell

 

When the rain falls, when it grows

Fern, the hymn of oblivion

 

When we die wise

When we die forever

 

Oh, so beautiful we will be

 

 

Hiccup

 

Is it my breath or the harp

That smells like the health smell of snowdrops

 

They say someone mentions

 

Reed that sings to my

Name sometimes, sometimes the oblivion

 

My body covered with leaves

 

Leave me a place in the hiccup

Of a beautiful sorrow

 

 

Shameful song

 

Tonight

I cried tonight for you

Arberland

 

I'm not ashamed

Why did I cry

I'm ashamed because I couldn't

Have done else

 

I cried out of shame

 

 

Descent from the ballad

 

This earthly world is best reached on foot

The beauty of the living always heals us from a toothache

 

How a river entered and fell through our thoughts

 

Here I the stubborn mortal with my mound in my hands

There a two-piece night and you and your prince passed

 

Goodbye my head, we will ripen beyond oblivion

 

 

Conversation with Shkrelis

 

How to pluck you from my plant

so wild, so good

 

once I will put you through the rhymes

violently, to die without mercy

 

to mercy, not even next time

We wouldn't be born any other way, that's all

 

why do we need the old madness

by which can’t no longer be dying

 

on the wall of the word, on the grass

on the bitter blood penitence

 

you will set the first oblivion

yours and sin

 

and in the roar of the wave, under the bridge

on the ground, in the fern, on the wire

 

in the moss, in the rifle, in the stone

whisper in my head, Shkrelis

 

 

Four advices to myself

 

Don't be a poet if you can't give birth

With each verse, to be born with each word.

 

Rise above yourself and you will hold the reins of the winds,

To step on the paths of anger and the paths of your blood.

 

If you fall in love, fall in love with the flame and the wave,

Not in blue eyes that you become a mad sea of remorse.

 

Don't be a poet if you can't die

For every verse, to die for every word…