POEM - HEAR THE VOICES OF THE RIVER, Poet - Rifat Ismaili

RIFAT ISMAILI -   ALBANIA - ITALY

BIOGRAPHY
Poet, prose writer and essayist Rifat Ismaili was born on March 24, 1968 in Durrës, Albania. From 1991 until today he lives in Italy, currently in Savona. Passionate about art and literature, he started to write and paint from school. Since 1986, it has been published in newspapers and magazines of the time and continues today. At the same time, in addition to working as an author, he was and is also engaged in translations, pronouncing authors such as Bukowski, Antonio Skarmeta, etc. His work has been published in Italian, English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Uzbek, Chinese, etc., in some of the literary bodies of those countries. To be underlined is the involvement in dozens of different publications as an editor or reviewer. Rifat Ismaili is the author of many books in different literary genres, both for adults and for children. 
He is the publisher of the anthological magazine Gjurmë Penash, which includes local and foreign authors.
I periodically publish the international literary and art magazine Kryefjala. I also publish the children's literature magazine Pena Balerina.



HEAR THE VOICES OF THE RIVER
Rifat Ismaili

The voices of the river belong to those who still live
and to those who have gone in silence.
It is the voice of the wind
melted through the waters...
The voice of lost and found love.
The voice of the beast calmly perched upon stones.
The cry of a seagull.
The echo of rain upon glass.
It is the illumination of the moon, the colors, the lights,
the shadow of the night travelers
without bodies, without return.
It is the mirror of the sky
and the mirror within us,
the ruler of life.
It is a solitary star
under the arc of the moon
and their mad secret.
It is the foam dispersed
as it stretches across the waters
where my dreams swim...
The force of the waterfall
that moves toward gentleness,
and the gentleness that reclaims
the act of its strength...
A bird touches the waves
and flies somewhere, lost.
A hand raised in the air,
calling out to another existence...
From one shore to another,
the soul sways like a boat.
The clouds with open wings
capture the freshly bloomed flowers...
A blind man
drawing with his stick in the air
the face of the beloved who hides from him.
My lit cigarette
like the memory of someone
who once was in my life,
or someone I met by chance.
A stone that bleeds innocent blood.

With a brush, I fly in the air,
with a brush of light
I paint a dream...
The screen of the sky
displays within me
things never known before.
This evening,
as if from a reawakening,
I hear, lost in thought, the voices of the river,
flowing through the veins of my heart

©®Rifat Ismaili