raindrops washed the streets of the smoky village,
the pigeon lands at the wrong address…street number 1986.
The dove, that morning, decorated the song in the bird’s nest,
the rotten mammal was flying
to bring tidings to the chord of Eros,
in Pristina it stops at Ulpiana,
relieves fatigue in the stork’s stork,
the reception smells of the White Crow,
Doris wrote the letter beautifully
in a duel he sought in the Chair
on street number 1986.
The late letter faded into reading…
she sheds tears on the side path,
crow’s feet, seeking separation
in the corner of the heart the melody of hope,
spiders in Doris’s painting
they embroider the bride’s dowry
the late letter wet with tears,
two-way flow switches cards,
to the wrong address –
a life in search traverses, road number 2016.
(The letter left from Peja city in Kosovo,in June 1986, reached Bardh village of Kosovo, in November 2016). The distance between Peja and Bardhi is 45 km!
THRILL
Good evening –
a portrait appears on the screen,
blonde girl with lots of bangs,
special name in this late fall.
Letters get lost on the keyboard,
confusion of emotions in the frozen landscape,
“I’m sorry… – I wanted to say hi,
I have a shiver in me!
“Well, for a few years now, they have made themselves…
“break of sweat on the afflicted forehead,
vision lost in crystal ecstasy…
that, behind the glass a more simplistic world.
He dances his fingers to the chord
of syntactic timbre submerged in pools of tears,
“how close we are, how far we feel”,
this antithesis said in synonymy,
a lot has changed, a lot.
A single path of divine longing,
where I hear the return in late winter,
suspend the sworn oath,
I am looking for architecture
in Rozafa Bridge,
nothing has changed, nothing.
FLOCK CARD
My goodness
Golden hair
in a wedding dress,
it disturbs my life
how you glean the corn
who wear and weave maiden crowns.
There was a mole on the cheek, the weight on the eyebrows
of mortal suffering, in the hands of fate
embroidered in Pelasgian letters,
history cashed in mythology.
The two portraits of your soul,
a woman in infinity
which wreath we laid on the altar of happiness,
the white wedding sheet
you stole from me treacherously!
On our pillow
we share the dreams of the future,
I miss you so much..
THE PERSECUTED MUHAJIR
You sat in the lap of dreams
I caressed her tender lips with caresses
and breasts flourished in my drunkenness,
Song of the Sibyls in poetic verse.
In the oasis of the aroma of tea we lay down,
in the leaves we looked at the unlived life,
we scratched the skin in myzava,
we used to fight in lectures for years.
We poured over the river bed
morality wrapped in dogma,
we spat the time we didn’t know each other
and when we got to know each other, we hugged.
You embroidered the bride in the poet’s muse,
I’m a persecuted muhajiri
I sought refuge in love
our harp was longing.
Lan Qyqalla, graduated from the Faculty of Philology in the branch of Albanian language and literature in Prishtina, from Republika of Kosovo. He is a professor of the Albanian language in the Gymnasium. He has written in many newspapers, portals, Radio, TV, and Magazines in the Albanian language and in English, Romanian, Francophone, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Hindu, Spanish, and Korean.
David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawingstitled Drawing Nirvana.
Spring has come to besieged Leningrad. It seemed that our neighbor’s prophecy was beginning to come true. My mother is in the hospital all the time. Apart from my mother, there are four of us left at home: my older sister Masha and brother Alexey, me and my younger brother Sasha. There has been no news from my father and brothers for several weeks, and we have been sick for the second week and do not go to school.
One of these days, there was a loud knock on our door (since the beginning of 1942, we have introduced the practice of closing doors, including the story of Baba Katya). As I was already recovering, I went to open it. Ivan and Leonid were on the threshold. To say that we were glad to see them is like saying nothing. During the war, without news, both returned alive and well!
We all literally escaped from the captivity of the disease at the same time. A brother and sister jumped out of bed, fussed, hung up soldiers’ overcoats, and began to set the table. There was not even a need for words – a smile did not leave the faces of the whole family. Even Sasha perked up, dangling his legs off the bed, smiling mysteriously, examining our defenders.
From the stories of Ivan and Leonid, we finally learned their whole life in recent months. It turned out that they were not accepted for service at the district military enlistment office because of their age, then they spontaneously decided to go to the front, at least as paramedics. Then there were a month and a half of training in the field, dangerous service in the frontline zone, rescue of the wounded. And now, their numerous petitions have been granted and after a three-day vacation they will return to their unit as ordinary Red Army soldiers.
– Are you only for three days? Masha asked with regret.
– It’s going to be a wonderful eternity for us! – Ivan smiled in response, – Let’s set the table already.
The guys brought sugar, nuts, dried fruits, canned fish – incredible delicacies for that time! And all we had was a few slices of bread and boiling water, so there wasn’t much to set the table.
No, that won’t do, – Ivan said, inspecting our feast.
– Let’s go to the market and buy something, – Leonid suggested, getting up from the table.
– Can I come with you? I jumped up after the brothers.
They both granted my request with an affirmative nod of their heads and, quickly gathering myself, I ran after them.
In those days, spontaneous markets could arise and disappear for several days almost anywhere, in squares, streets, even courtyards. The authorities tried to disperse these gatherings, so the merchants did not stay in the same place for a long time. Moreover, these markets had a bad reputation. At the other end of the district, my brothers and I came across one of these markets. Contrary to expectations, it was an incredibly lively place filled with all kinds of goods from groceries to antiques, so we even got a little lost in this abundance.
– Soldiers, do you want to buy something? – some merchant grabbed Ivan by the sleeve.
We turned towards the counter. Behind him stood a short old man, whom I disliked at first sight. He had small, angry, depressed piggy eyes, a bumpy robber’s face, and he was dressed in a padded jacket and a black earflap.
– Yes, Father, we should have something for the table… – Ivan began.
– Maybe meat? That terrible grandfather interrupted him.
– Do you have any meat? – We were surprised.
– Yes, but be quiet… – he looked around and took out a small bundle soaked in blood, – Pork, fresh!
– And where does it come from? Leonid hesitated, carefully examining the goods. I immediately remembered the neighbor’s story, but the evil look of this man scared me so much that I did not dare to tell about it now and hoped that there was pork in the bag.
– This is for the elite, but I got it on occasion, – he said, as if justifying himself.
– What’s the difference, we can’t find it cheaper and better. We’ll take it! Ivan said decisively.
As I was leaving, I took another look at that grandfather and he answered me with his cold gaze, so I quickly looked away and tried to forget myself in conversations with my brothers.
Soon we were at home and joyfully handed Masha the package we had bought. She jumped up with joy and ran to the kitchen to cook. But before we could sit down at the table, Masha thoughtfully returned back to the room and spoke softly:
– Guys, there’s something wrong with the meat…
– What happened? Leonid came up to her.
For a minute he silently examined this small piece, lightly tracing it with his finger, then suddenly changed his face and cried out:
– Yes, it’s human!
– You’re lying! Ivan snatched the meat from his hands.
– Look for yourself! Leonid waved it off.
There was a tense pause, after which Ivan sullenly agreed:
– You’re right.…
Without saying another word, he quickly went to the window, opened it and angrily threw the meat out into the street. So we were left without a festive dinner.
Examine a close reading of the poem “Whitsun Weddings” with critical analysis and textual references.
(Image of Philip Larkin, a black and white photo of a skinny middle-aged white man sitting on a couch in a room, wearing reading glasses).
Whitsun Weddings is a brandishing testamentary swashbuckler locomotive wedding party of ceremonial festivities and ritualistic observance of postcolonial and post industrial England. The impending wedding coach has been metaphorically epitomized by Philip Larkin as a means of celebratory cavalcade. “We headed towards London, shuffling gouts of steam. Now fields were building plots and poplars cast”
Whitsun Weddings occasion symbolically manifest old maidish Postcolonial British folks entrenched and rooted by a connubial affair in accord to the fiscal reformation aftermath of the beginning of a new financial year instead of that ending from a previous year. Philip Larkin’s vaticination and sortilege of the porters and mails bears to metaphorical connotations of pregnant women and their spouses respectively through avant garde impressionism. Poet laureate’s setting and locale of Whitsun Weddings is a treasure trove of observation, reflection and contemplation amidst “Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.”
“The secret like a happy funeral” encapsulates the oxymoronic ambivalence that is at the heart of this fascinating reading of Larkin’s litany poems. “While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared. At a religious wounding” might implicate references to saturnine temperaments and stony faced solemnity being exposed to sepulchral sombre melancholia. The affair of espousal is overall sultry dismay, gloomy despair, desultory grim and grave depression in accord with Larkin’s point of view. Expanses and vistas of England with drifting of Britannic legacy and British isles have been subjected to dismantlement and shrinkages afterwards of the Great World Wars.
Whitsun Weddings is that seventh Sunday after Easter, Pentecost Christian holiday, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem and 1950s Britain’s progressive levy reform position legitimizes financially beneficiary matrimonial alliance. The signature litany of verbal photographic memorabilia from the memorialization of a train travelling outside the carriage windows rattling through the British landscapes. Englishness and Britishness of the 1960s era symbolize cultural hallmarks of the charismatic poem as indicated by the parodies of fashion lurking beneath veils and heels of soon to be wedded maidens and already betrothed ladies. Language, speech, prosody and rhetoric has been alchemically metamorphosed from the bedrock of ordinariness to that extraordinary visual and auditory impact and emphases. For exemplary evidences point to uncles with smutty mouth, fathers with broad belts under suits and mothers with seamy foreheads, nylon gloves and jewellery substitutes and lemons, mauves and olive ochres.
“A sense of falling, like an arrow shower/ Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain” herein the epilogue revealing epiphanic heavenly downpour onto earth as metaphorical connotations of anarchy being poured. Larkin, haunted and obsessed with marriage, conspicuously extrapolates the unforeseen on edge and fidgety ending.
BBC has a radio show where Simon Armitage explores Philip Larkin’s poem The Whitsun Weddings.
