My Woman’s Body
In the long nights when there is no light
and the dark looks like a mass of coal,
I eavesdrop on my body: my heartbeats,
the nightmares that frighten my sleep.
I don’t know why. I cannot recognize it.
The heat invades me like a desert storm,
my body is taken from me and
the winter and summer are thrown together.
You sleep blissfully next to me, my arms –
outstretched, don’t reach you in your dreams.
Who knows what exotic lands you explore there?
And you ignore my feeble cry for help.
One day you won’t recognize me anymore
and a stranger will appear in front of you.
I will be less child, more adult, thoughtful.
Surely you will have lost my first wrinkles.
You’ll be sorry that you weren’t closer to me
to accompany me, holding my hand,
to cross together the bridge where a woman
grew up and threw her frailties far away.
How do you feel, little child?
Tell me, how do you feel in this world
where sorrow knows no boundaries?
Your Mom departed too quickly, to
where there’s no pain or suffering.
Who will caress you with a gaze and
who will put the joy back in your life?
Whose eyes will you watch as in a mirror,
and who will call you “my son?”
Who will whisper sweet words to you,
and where will you find enough love?
Have you begun to see the world without
colours, entirely in black and white?
Fate abandoned you; you are an orphan.
By an evil hand your Mom was taken.
Will luck find its way back to you, now
that shrouded in fog seems everything?
Your Mom is in heaven, above in the sky.
Believe it, until you grow up one day.
Fate abandoned you, and now you are only
an orphan. Will fate ever come back this way?
The Last Walk
We were walking together, mother;
and I couldn’t understand
why you said nothing, as in silence,
you cried.
I was more confused than you
as I asked “Why do you cry?”
Your glance was fixed in space,
your hand touching mine.
I didn’t know that was our last walk,
though you seemed to understand.
You were sorry for yourself, for me
on the way to leave this world.
You felt sorry—you wouldn’t see me,
you wouldn’t hug me anymore,
you wouldn’t enjoy those green parks
and the kiss of the sun’s rays in the morning.
If I’d known it would be our last walk,
I would have kept you in my arms.
Irma Kurti is an Albanian poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator and has been writing since she was a child. She lives in Bergamo, Italy. Kurti has won numerous literary prizes and awards in Italy and Italian Switzerland. In 2020, she became the honorary president of WikiPoesia, the encyclopedia of poetry. She also won the prestigious 2023 Naji Naaman’s literary prize for complete work. Irma Kurti has published 29 books in Albanian, 25 in Italian and 15 in English. She has also translated 20 books by different authors. Her books have been translated and published in 16 countries.
