Human existence is like a dead language
of which only an expression, a quotation, or a single word remains.

But a man without sons is a mutation.
His name will move from one ear to another by a clean female whisper
voiced like a dream without conflict
difficult to remember after night's end.

Six daughters, each birth a failure
like the gold prospector
who brings home only silk and medicinal herbs.

Without a son in the family,
there is no river to carry the toxic remains
of his black and white anger,
no one to foresee war in the bones of the ram
sacrificed for dinner;
no wars, no births or deaths
when life gets lazy in peacetime.

His cell is a cave
sketched with naive carbon drawings:
the hunter against the beast, the hunter against nature,
until the moment a woman appears around the fire.
Then strength moves from his muscles
to his eyes.
and the angle of the arrow's aim shifts.

This is the end of the ice age
the end of clarity.

There is a secret that extinguishes men from the inside
like Dwarf Stars
changing from yellow to white
and then… to black, a smudge across the cosmos.
There is no son to inherit the father's secret.…
not the secret itself
but the art of solitude.

Translated from Albanian: Henry Israeli