As is my custom, I am reading a couple of books at the same time. How I do it, I honestly don’t know. Yes, of course, it’s easy if all the books do not have the same type of topics but ……anyway…. I happened to be in the poetry/literature part of the library during my last visit and I’ve borrowed books along those lines.
I started out looking for “Conference of the Birds”. I’ve been told about this book a couple of times and I did pick it up about 3/4 visits ago but put it back down, hoping to learn more on Sufism before I read it. One of the books I picked up this particular visit was a book of poems by an Albanian man, Visar Zhiti. Imprisoned at the peak of his prime of 27, for 8 years. Imagine being locked up in a dark, dank room, with nothing accept the clothes off your back and your mind. No glimpse of the outside world or even contact with other prisoners whom you know are within the other walls. No sun, no moon, no comfort of any kind. Nothing to lose except for your mind. Even the simple pleasure of writing was not allowed. I think if it were me, I would have been long dead – probably of insanity.
Visar kept his sanity intact by “writing” and memorising his poems. Reading through the first few pages of his book, I am struck by how he keeps things “alive” in his mind by reminiscing and remembering the outside world. Simple things like “the verdant branches of a cherry tree” or the shoeshine boy. He employs Greek mythology and Shakespeare in his poems, bringing in the likes of Romeo, Juliet, Prometheus and Ulysses to describe his feelings and his thoughts. He writes about how he remembers the outside world – not just through rose-tinted glasses but the brutality of war and the longing for loved ones. I don’t know how to describe his works – my words cannot tell you enough. You must read it to know it. I leave you with two of his poems:
I started out looking for “Conference of the Birds”. I’ve been told about this book a couple of times and I did pick it up about 3/4 visits ago but put it back down, hoping to learn more on Sufism before I read it. One of the books I picked up this particular visit was a book of poems by an Albanian man, Visar Zhiti. Imprisoned at the peak of his prime of 27, for 8 years. Imagine being locked up in a dark, dank room, with nothing accept the clothes off your back and your mind. No glimpse of the outside world or even contact with other prisoners whom you know are within the other walls. No sun, no moon, no comfort of any kind. Nothing to lose except for your mind. Even the simple pleasure of writing was not allowed. I think if it were me, I would have been long dead – probably of insanity.
Visar kept his sanity intact by “writing” and memorising his poems. Reading through the first few pages of his book, I am struck by how he keeps things “alive” in his mind by reminiscing and remembering the outside world. Simple things like “the verdant branches of a cherry tree” or the shoeshine boy. He employs Greek mythology and Shakespeare in his poems, bringing in the likes of Romeo, Juliet, Prometheus and Ulysses to describe his feelings and his thoughts. He writes about how he remembers the outside world – not just through rose-tinted glasses but the brutality of war and the longing for loved ones. I don’t know how to describe his works – my words cannot tell you enough. You must read it to know it. I leave you with two of his poems:
The Condemned Apple
The day gapes open
Like a endless chasm under my feet.
How can I fill it to enter the next day?
Hundreds of times have I heaved myself into it,
trodden upon myself.
Descent into solitude!
I have been left without the comfort of human voices
as if without fire.
Barefoot day after day
I walk back and forth
With nowhere to go.
There is no road under my feet,
No one here to say ‘good morning,’
They hurl a broom at me
And make me sweep the floor
of my misfortune
And I, gone mad, scream in silence:
Hi there, world!
You may have forgotten me,
but not I, you.
The Little Things
Only with a leaf
Can I talk of the forest,
Only a star
Can ensure you are not alone.
An abandoned shoe,
Rouses endless roads.
Light a cigarette
From Prometheus’ pack.
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