Shadows on the Snow
by Luljeta Lleshanaku, Translated from Albanian by Shpresa Qatipi & Henry Israeli
The snow comes late this year. Violet shadows doze like shepherds round a white fire. The swaying shadow of a fence looks like a woman’s clavicle— a woman who dreams of her lover’s snowy journey home, his late return. Thin trails lead to the doorway. A car parked for hours compresses black earth. Radio signals float just out of earshot. A boat with its eel fishers in luminous raincoats skims by. A child—his little hand trembling— casts slanting trees across the table. The choir kneels. The moment has come to speak in a voice I have never known before. I raise my head and see a single star in the night sky, shapeless and fearful like the shard of a broken bottleneck, a star I have for years foolishly followed. Perhaps the shadow of our infinite persistence looks to someone else like a large hump on the Moon a camel bent over a puddle preparing for a new stretch of thirst.
First Published in Words Without Borders (Jan 2004)
The poem feels like stepping into a quiet winter moment where everything is softened and slightly strange.
I love how the shadows on the snow feel almost alive, like memories drifting around the edges of the scene.
There’s a quiet loneliness in the details the parked car, the distant radio, the trembling child.
When the speaker says the moment has come to speak, it feels like something inside finally cracks open.
The star described as a broken bottleneck is such a raw, unsettling image, full of regret.
You can sense the weight of following something sharp and uncertain for years.
The poem moves from the outside world into something deeply internal without ever forcing it.
That final image of persistence as a camel preparing for more thirst is haunting.
It suggests endurance, but also the exhaustion that comes with never giving up.
Overall, it feels like someone finally facing a truth they’ve been carrying in silence for a long time.
What a surprising poem! Each shadow, a new yield.