In a Remote Village
In Albanian, a living room is a “friends’ room,”
and in this house there is only one windowless room
with a single wooden door to the outside.
This is how they’ve always built here,
you’re happy to tell me:
for fear of strangers and bloodletting. Even today
the world is sly and cruel,
life a hostile environment. Yet in the middle of the room
a fire burns, black coffee steams and boils.
You pour, glance and see: night won’t be
an island of sleep. Four will lie down on this floor—
your brothers, and you , and my body (from the four winds
I alone was meant to arrive in this remote village).
There’ll be no rest in the friends’ room, just
a bit of comfort and we’ll go on our way;
the nights piling exhausted around us
won’t quiet our blood.
Documentation
On the mobile phone to my monk:
held hostage in Bethlehem,
he shares his crusts with thugs
and his pallet with guns,
far from the North Star,
or a compass,
or an encompassing conscience,
yet close as ever to the star of Nativity
and divine dawn. Outside
above the tanks, clouds
so low, so
fast, too fast,
many clouds close by.
[Translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz]
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