Out - Agron Tufa

You get up in the morning

And remember you don't know where you left your eyes.

One, you forget you left at home,

The other dripped from a tap in silence.

Then you remember that you are only awake

And everything happened devoid of eyelids.

The conditions ripen

And respect flows like a cataract over that one-time skull.

You seem to have been harvesting

Lucerne forever and

A gentle sacrifice full of the smell of chlorophyll

Ploughs your farm-boy illusions.

A lucid childhood,

Lived normally and without regret,

Like all useful things, without which

There would be no ellipses or metaphysics,

No flights and crashes, no losses

Of Liburnian galleys

In the limp and practical body of man...

Present neglect and past oblivion,

How well they suit one another.

---

Agron Tufa (born 1967) Albania

Translated by Robert Elsie

Source: Big Bridge 16