WHERE PARIS KEEPS THE POETS

I did not come as a curious tourist,

but as a poet,

following the footprints of language

along pavements where Apollinaire

once turned light into a living shape.

I read Éluard by candlelight,

watching love lay its claim on the world,

and heard Rimbaud somewhere beyond the boulevards,

a voice breaking through

the solitude of awakening,

a meteor crossing the night.

Aragon leaned close

and left his sentence in the air:

“There is no such thing as happy love.”

Still,

what could be more beautiful

than a poem that sings of love

and Paris,

even when the city

chooses silence?

Where are they now?

In which labyrinth

have their voices gone?

Are they buried beneath

the quiet of Montmartre,

or still breathing

between the lines

of poems that refuse to die?

Paris looks at me

as if I were a stranger.

I carry Dardania *

like a wound beneath the skin,

and the soul of my language,

heavy as lead,

clear as tears,

I place it here

among dust-covered tables,

between names

the city has not forgotten.

I did not come to see Paris.

I came

to breathe the city

sleeping inside its metaphors,

to thread this poem

through the language I carry,

to write it

in my own name,

Lani

in the word that remembers

the poets,

and in the breath

of these streets

where poetry

has not yet learned

how to die.

• Dardania, ancient name of Kosovo