Prizren

This city is proud of its stature and size,

By car it takes an hour,
On foot a hundred years,
You set off counting the trees, the fountains and songs,
The tombstones and eons.
Three generations old when you reach it,
With the weight of time on your back.

Ailing and tired of solitude,
You find an ancient house in town,
Guarded by two ancient men,
One with a necktie and papers,
A felt cap and pistol, the other.

You measure your age and your loneliness
In the cracked earth, the crumbling roofs,
The smokeless chimneys...
And learn of the balance of words and of things.

The fortress above you is silent
With teeth as long as time itself,
Who has known more solitude:
The fortress, the river or you,
Or Prizren itself, that ancient city?

[Prizren, from the volume Trungu ilir, Prishtina: Rilindja, 1983, p. 306.
Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]