Do You Now See, Etna, How Seasons Communicate? – Alisa Velaj

You, too, wait for me when fall arrives.
Winter, afterwards, is how you treat it:
it may numb your limbs to the bone,
same as it may be that uninvited guest,
who knocks on the door one snowstormy night,
and is seated by the hearth, where firewood is cracking,
while he starts pulling out oven-hot stories,
about true or made-up stuff,
leaving the curious kids dumbstruck.

Don’t wait for fall to come to your doorstep.
Seasons have their own events,
same as people do.
It may happen that it shows by surprise,
it may flash by your home,
while in a hurry to elsewhere.

It might have come forth from inside your being,
while you were busy watering the lilies,
white like the steamy breath in a winter day.

Do you now see, Etna, how seasons communicate?

• Translated from Albanian: ARBEN P. LATIFI

 

About the contributor: Alisa Velaj was born in 1982 in Albania. She has been shortlisted for the Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in 2014. Her poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Erbacce, The Curlew, CultureCult Magazine, Stag Hill Literary Journal , The Quarterly Review, Orbis, The Linnet’s Wings, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Poetry Space Showcase, The Seventh Quarry, among eighty other publications. Her poetry collection, With No Sweat At All, translated by Ukë Buçpapaj  will be published by Cervana Barva Press in 2019. During February 2019, Velaj earned an Artist-in-Residence scholarship and attended the AIR Litteratur Västra Götaland program in Villa Martinson, Jonsered, Sweden.