My mother took me with her
while she worked in the fields.
Tales of fawns and woods she told me
mornings on the plowed earth.
She lay me on the grass
next to the gypsy tents.
And she faded into the horizon
among green plants of maize.
After morning came the noon
on fields of black thorns.
The sad song of the peligòrga1
filled the valley with its sound.
Long was the day in Darsia
under the burning sun.
When I cried and was hungry
the gypsy women nursed me.
Among sounds and dances of bears
I grew in the years of my youth.
What I’ve lost today
is their magic tongue.
Today in the village still
they call me the gypsy’s friend.
As the lake awaited the swans
So I, their white tents.
As soon as I saw them on the hilltop,
crazy with joy,
I ran down into the valley
to meet the brown Nejmè.
1 . Peligòrga: solitary green-feathered bird that lives on the banks of rivers and streams; it makes its nest only in Darsìa, la hilly province where the poet was born.
Poem from the collection Peligòrga, Besa 2007
translated by Brenda Porster