Song

Were you to rise
Not like a flower
But like a volcano,

Were you to soar
Not like a bird
But like the sun,

Were you to fall
Not like a leaf
But like lightning,

Let me be
The flower, the bird and the leaf.

[Këngë, from the volume Sidomos nesër, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1989, p. 24, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in
English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 202]