Project Description
Valbona Luta
Valbona Ismaili Luta is an Albanian from Kosova who was born in 1966 in Prishtina. She started writing at an early age, but her first poems were published when she was a teenager. She used to write for a student newspaper, ‘Bota e re’, published in Prishtina. She came to London in 1993 and is currently a correspondent for a Kosova Albanian women’s monthly magazine called ‘Teuta’.
A DRAMA
Translated from Albanian by Ragip Luta
NEVER fight against life
DO NOT let the horses get lost on the paths
REMEMBER the dogs barking like mad
and the sofra* laid without bread
DO NOT open the doors to the wounds
LISTEN!
THE BLOOD will flood
A WHOLE DRAMA on a small stage.
* sofra – dinner table
THE TEAR-DROP OF A CHILD
The beginning of the new,
they say, is there
and perfection of the old,
This amazes everyone
just like your beauty…
They say people there
make love dining,
and bohemians enjoy wandering
up and down your boulevards
Homelands have been betrayed for you
by those who loved art
whilst poets,
poets, buried their lovers there
and, those souls
that do not breathe
were woken up by your chansons …
But yesterday I had
my ideal shattered
by the imprisoned tear-drop
of the child,
behind your wires….