Grapes on your vine

 by ArB eLo

Grapes on your vine

The self prays softly underneath the skull, and when I hear it

speak one wounded in the chest appears all trembling lips and

on these, tears. What should I do, take pills or light a candle,

or myself pray along with it, but ask forgiveness of what sins?

It would not be so bad to pray for no more murder, for freedom

and for bread, to pray and weep until the yearning for the gods

even that is filled. A woman to some, a father to others, she is

to me a child, of blazing flames which frolic in the dark with us,

their shadows; in me underneath the skull the self softly prays:

“Let us expire, and be reduced to ash in you, O you All merciful,

complete this time of burden and untie our hands, let us go into

the blooming meadows, accomplish what you promised, so may

our paths be a sole one for all; give us light from your very soul!”

Gleaned by the blue-bruised hands of bulging veins we drip light

and shadow side by side; I am of the globes one, the other you,

we are not many nor do we know what sort they are though they

look just like us. Of our wine drinks our Lord and He disheartens

beside us like the grapevine whence we come, his tears swell up

and darken from our black must. He is the night, the firefly drunk

on him thus brighter shines, its wings falter and it staggers raving

in the ether. Those hands are bare, nuts without a shell that ripen

underneath the stars, move faintly in the sky slowly toward dawn,

they pick us one by one from the truss leave us thus on strangers’

lips, soul of those in grace departed and forever free from suffering…

Përktheu: Besnik Ikonomi