If the world is wild, Anja…

Its rotten skin from the salt of dreams is the page

Where you will write our story

With the colours of the earth, flames and water

You will shape the entire world completely,

This world which now and then pours

Bone and flesh

If the chimney is falling down, Anja…

The ashes will remain in the fireplace

The stars will enter from the foundation stones

Of your grandparents’ house

The light will stretch like his hands

That once used to roll tobacco

With newspaper pages,

The Moon will show you the other side

Filled with mother’s silky words

Until it becomes full in the crown of the sky

Seasons will change, Anja…

Fruits will ripen

Pomegranates, oranges and olives

Likely her beautiful eyes

Enlightened by life’s sourness

Apples will fall down

The trees will not be broken

Chestnuts will fall on your beautiful head

The colour will remain into your heart

Dancing in the wind endlessly

You will see where the seeds of life are sleeping in soil

The sweat grain seeds of hope

Underneath the snow

You will dance on the ice my ballerina

And I will be that butterfly somewhere around the flames

Only then, my child

Will have learned to love all people,

Despite bitterness, sadness, illness, and craziness,

You will have seen everything, Anja…

You will lie down in pain,

Your heart will get broken,

Then you will rise again,

And climb up the mountain,

You will drink honey and wine

You will become a mother and a wife,

And you will forever remain a daughter and a sister,

The sweet child of light

You are the holy love of life, Anja..

And if the world is wild,

Its rotten skin is the soil

Where you will always plant life!

ENTELA KASI is the Albanian PEN President and ambassador for peace, poetess, novelist, translator and essayist. She is author of many books in Albanian and foreign languages, has been awarded national and international awards in literature, and her works are translated into many different languages. She also writes for Albanian journals and daily press with a focus in social movements, culture and politics.