The poems below were written in the framework of the project READ - Regional Network for Culture and Diversity funded by the European Commission within the Civil Society and Media Program and  implemented by Goethe-Institut Skopje together with the Partner organizations: Center for Balkan Cooperation – Loja (North Macedonia), Fondacioni Instituti i Librit dhe i Promocionit (Albania), Kalem Culture Association (Turkey), Association Krokodil (Serbia) and Qendra Multimedia (Kosovo). 

Daim Miftari was in a one-month literary residence hosted by Qendra Multimedia  in Prishtina in May, 2022. 

DAYS

Days every day. They meet each other on the street.

Morning to evening.

Like neighbors

Or acquaintances who talk about the same old boring things.

In the morning, they wake up and scatter like urban bus lines,

and walk towards the same destinations.

When they feel their feet can't stand no more,

they sit in some café or park bench or street corner.

Taking out the cigarette packet,

unpaid bills fall on the ground,

which they pick up as an important document.

Then they burn

a few cigarettes in a row,

like the hopes burned on the face.

Days roll like the wheels of a broken car.

Like an old coat on the shoulders of a poor man.

While night just as every night, like a tired worker showing up on the street.

Prishtinë, May 24, 2022 (At the Multimedia Center Writers' Residence)

SUMMERTIME

Childhood house dances

to the tune of birds on tree branches.

The smell of flowers and freshly baked bread

in mother's hands

the backyard smells.

Little sister returns from school.

Dog barking and child voices out there on the street.

The evening falls happily.

The fireflies rush in.

Just let me catch one, I say.

Prishtinë, May 18, 2022 (At the Multimedia Center Writers' Residence)

I'VE SEEN MY LIFE

Sometimes like a bug

stuck between the window glass,

I've seen my life.

As it sometimes happens to us with someone,

who suddenly appears before us,

and we look aside, I've seen

my life.

Fighting fortune, sometimes. Like a conflict

provoked by others,

while you just want

to make peace. I've seen my life.

Prishtinë, May 31, 2022 (At the Multimedia Center Writers' Residence)

THOUGH I'VE NEVER BEEN TO KOSOVO

I've known these streets for long.

I've seen every part of it, over and over again.

I passed between tanks, cops, the smell of gunpowder, blood.

At nights, I'd fall asleep to the echo of bullets in my ear. Moaning

of the wounded, killed.

I've been sad. I've revolted. I've cried.

I've crossed the border on foot. I've walked between the line of the exiled.

Men, women, children, old men, dragging their lives.

Kosovo is like the sick man who has just opened his eyes from anesthesia.

Prishtinë, May 31, 2022 (At the Multimedia Center Writers' Residence)