Tim eti, two words

From: Eris Rusi

The last book of my father, Skender Rusit, is titled "Slowly I am running away". He chose this title himself. "It's poetic", he told me, and it remained so, until the publication.

But poets know when it's time to say things that are still indecipherable to ordinary people.

On the last day of May 2024, as my father liked to call it, the world stopped its usual rotation for him. The poet closed his eyes and kept an indecipherable, calm, peaceful smile on his lips, as if everything had an explanation, and heaven is here, waiting for us all. A week later, there is a quietness in the house that keeps you awake. To see in the dark, to make out the faint moonlight gliding pale, faded over the covers of the books in the library.

Father's house is all like this: bookshelves, mobiles bearing titles and worlds created by people who have lived since the beginning of time. I have known some of the authors who wrote these books since my childhood: Dritëro Agollin, Moikom Zeqon, Petrit Rukën, Petraq Zoton, Demir Gjergjin, Simon Vrushon, Klito Fundon, Ylber Merdanin, Ali Bregun and many, many people who once they caressed my unruly hair, caressed my childish cheeks, as I caressed my own hair, his face in deep sleep.

Then there are the books of people I have never met, but they were names that I always carry inside me as creators who have given meaning to my life, who have shaped my thinking and the way you can breathe in a world that does not It's never what it seems.

Next, there are my father's books. Lined up, everywhere. It was a lot of fun when I went to see him at home. The first thing he did was run to the library, grab one of his books and start reading to me. But even when he created a new poem and printed it in several copies at once. Each member of the family gave him a copy, not allowing the sheet to pass from one hand to another. He wanted the impression immediately, simultaneously. He listened and was happy.

Happy, my father, with a shadow inseparable from himself with the name of Parkinson's that appeared 27 years ago and turned into the thorn that devoured every beautiful moment of his, I have seen only next to poetry and my mother.

In our house, in our life, in the city of Korça, wherever he met people, my father and mother were one. I can't understand how it is possible that the fate of people is connected so strongly, by what my father has called the essence of his poetry: Love. A boundless love that tonight, with this yellow moonlight licking the books lined up in the unbearable silence of the night, seems to me to have kept him and his poetry alive for all this time of mine.

I am sleeping in the place where until yesterday the poet gave himself to sleep and dreams. It is my childhood home. I will stay here as long as necessary. And I still keep inside me the feeling of this place that looks familiar from the outside and you dare to enter, without being sure if you should knock or not, if there is anyone inside or not, if you will find light and warmth inside no ... Well, once the handle was easily bent, the door was pushed without a hitch and you found yourself inside where I saw someone who resembled the most beloved memory of my life at whom I smiled and he smiled back at me.

Once upon a time, but. But, since the last day of May this year, no more. This was his world, that of the poet Skënder Rusi, and I am in my father's house where the man slept and woke up and where poetry will sleep and wake up forever.

O father! - I feel like calling. But the yellow moon in the sky distracts me. He shed light on the cover of the book "Slowly I'm Running Away"! I know the contents of this book in detail. Gjergji and Eralda who asked me to choose the poems with my father, and mine who wanted to hurry as soon as possible, for the book to come out as soon as possible, to be distributed and reprinted again. In every poem, it seems to me that my father wanted to say something. To show that flesh and blood are nothing without the soul, without that essence that will remain and return to heaven, even when we are no more. Even further, my father chooses to say something with another poem of his: "I don't want to run away angry". And, he went quietly. Without burdening anyone. With no one in his life who held a grudge or wanted to harm him. And, the city of Korça, friends, relatives, readers, came and honored him with endless flowers in the solemn tribute, one day after his death. Everything was as if it was handwritten by him. In the end, all around the author, with actors reciting poems, with people being touched and hearts being filled with breath. Such is life. It knows how to excite, from artists, even in death.

He had that goodness in life, my own, that he took with him even on his last journey. He loved Korça, the people of this city, the readers who gathered and listened to his poems. My father's house was and will remain poetry. I remember when he showed me the publication of his first book, in 1975: "The grass was wet". When he found out that finally, after nine rejections, his book would be published, my father burst into tears. And the tears were big, like hailstones falling on the table. Tears fell, hail that made noise. The poet cried. With a sigh.

Today, half a century later, readers cry. The poet again made a solution like his own. He decided to run away, without warning, without bothering anyone. With a smile on his lips, rare, good like no other!

"Dad"!

I said these words once, many times, when I found him dead, while stroking his hair in his deep sleep, in the living room where he sometimes tripped and fell. He didn't answer me. His poem came to my mind. His soul. Which came in this form:

I WILL HAVE GONE

When you see that there will be no more
no sturgeon,
Along the moonlit road,
When you see that there will be no more
no stone,
Through the cobblestones where we once grew,

When you see that there will be no more
no yard
With children who have just been born,
When you see that there will be no more
no guitar,
To distribute in the streets
sounds,

When you see that there will be no more
no window
To lie open waiting,
When you see that there will be no more
no new kisses
of all the kisses that have been invented,

Know that, then,
I will be gone!

Now, by the will of Heaven, surprisingly, the last house of my life, in the cemetery of the city of Korça, is under the shadow of a large, leafy linden. Even on the road with no moon, my father will always have his sturgeon, which means that he has not yet run away, which means that he will never run away, my father, the poet, returned to the soul.