I.

Medio tutissmus ibis, the middle is the safest ground.
The embroidered tablecloth in the middle of the table.
The table in the middle of the carpet.
The carpet in the middle of the room.
The room in the middle of the house.
The house in the middle of the block.
The block in the middle of the town.
The town in the middle of the map.
The map in the middle of the blackboard.
The blackboard in the middle of nowhere.

Lola is an angel. Her forehead hasn't grown since she was eight,
her center of gravity unchanged. And she likes edges, corners
although she always finds herself
in the middle of the bus
where people rush toward the doors at either end.

My neighbors never went to school
nor have they heard of aesthetics
and hardly ever have they read anything
about the Earth's axes, symmetry, or absolute truth.
But instinctively they let themselves drift toward the middle
like a man laying his head on a woman's lap,
a woman who, with a pair of scissors
will make him more vulnerable than ever
before the day is done.

II.

Broken toys were my playthings:
zebras, wind-up Chinese dolls, ice-cream carts
given to me as New Year's presents by my father.
But none was worth keeping whole.
They looked like cakes whose icing had been
licked off by a naughty child
until I broke them, cracked and probed their insides, the tiny
gears, the batteries,
not aware then that I was rehearsing
my understanding of freedom.

When I first looked at a real painting
I took a few steps backward instinctively
on my heels
finding the precise place
where I could explore its depth.
It was different with people:
I built them up,
loved them, but stopped short of loving them fully.
None were as tall as the blue ceiling.
As in an unfinished house, there seemed to be a plastic sheet
above them instead of a roof
at the beginning of the rainy autumn of my understanding.

Translated from Albanian: Henry Israeli