00 Where can I find you oh companions of my youth? We leave a place, a city, and the place, the city call us back again and again. We are born in a country, one of its cities, in a particular street and house. We are born in a country side, away from all traces of modernistic civilization, under the light of candles or flickering fluorescent beams. People gather around us or we stay in the company of Death alone. This is the moment when w e face truth, in a few seconds we will see it but will not share with anyone else. Or will we? This dying man has seen the love for his country come and go, the laughter of his countrymen sound and resonate, the cumulus of voices come to his bed, they increase in volume and tone, they collide with each other like sub-atomic particles in a thick quantum soup. All come to his side, the rope supporting the body of his dead father, the nurturing voice of his mother calling in summer, the strangeness of Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and French languages all mixed into one Babelic sound. The streets of Bucharest are laid before him: the Piata Unirii, where he stood as a youngster hearing his brothers’ call to arms for the fatherland and where he himself was, as an older poet, who aroused the masses to fight for their culture. His was a small apartment on Str Postel, around the corner of the Stavropoleos Church, where Alin sat and ate with him, where they made furious love and also with gentleness after strolling for hours the promenades of Cismigiu Gardens. Where is Aslin, their only daughter? He can only hear the toddler giggling and trying her first words ‘Abba, abba’, which makes tears stream down his cheeks one more time. Gone is the Caru cu Bere bar where he enjoyed cold beers with his brothers under dazzling stained glass windows, and where countless insurrection plots were drawn before convincing him that poetry was the most effective weapon. Where did the coal mines go? Now his fingertips are black, the deep blue eyes come to prominence amidst the carbon-soiled boyish face. Gone is the city of Constanta, facing the Black Sea where he taught political sciences for several years, where Alin and him bathed under benevolent suns, where his missing Aslin almost drowned once, and where Sophia Gerasimenko parted and departed more than once trying to remember and then forget the impossible love of a Hungarian immigrant. Gone are the Sunbeams his hero Skanderbeg inspired, gone the Dija Society he followed and later led, gone the Dreams and Tears poems his English friend Edith Durham appreciated so much. Silent felt the guns of World War I and the nightmares of World War II, silent –as always- are the compatriots who used him in Durres, Theth, and Shkodra. Forgotten are the Nazi forces captured in 1944 by sudden Albanian enemies –yes, independence has a price like everything else-, forgotten are the princes and princesses drooling for power from foreign lands. There are no more heroes in sacrificial Albania, only lambs. Asdreni will not see the Soviets preying on Tirana and ravaging, from 1953 on, every remnant of Albanian culture that dared to breathe in public. But Sophia Gerasimenko did. He will not see the rise and fall of Ceaucescu in Romenia or that of Hoxha in his fatherland Albania, jumping from Soviet communism to Chinese-style Cultural Revolution. But Sophia Gerasimenko did. In this time and place, when Death is a voice that rises above all voices, this dying man is a shadow and a beacon. In distant lands, like entangled particles separated by time and space, yet united in poetry and destiny, this dying man will connect to other poets, to other generations, to a lost daughter in unsuspected ways. In this time and place, when the breath of spirit escapes us little by little and our heart weakens with each struggling beat, the dying poet recites in his soul: Forgotten Memories Where can I find you, oh companions of my youth, That I might once more enjoy that beloved time, Moments which filled us with such delight When we played and frolicked in mirth sublime? Not a drop of sorrow did we feel in our souls, Our hearts were so fully transfixed by the spring, Little did we know that our lives would be sad, And lost youth would nevermore joy to us bring. Like the autumn leaves which the wind doth chase Like a fleeting moment of glee which escapes, Or a summer night's dream that veils its trace, You can sense, you can see how our elusive hopes Brought surprising delights to us now and again, Like the rays of the moon glowing on a parched plain! [Kujtime të shkuara, from the volume Psallme Murgu, Bucharest 1930. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Visiting Miami

For Liam's first birthday

First day of 2012

Enjoying the first day of the year with breakfast at home in Miami.

Change is inevitable and always for the better if we know how to use it.