Vilson Blloshmi was born on March 18th, 1948 in a village near Librazhd, Albania to a kulak family of landowning peasants. It was a patriotic household, opposed to the Fascists and Communists alike. As such, they were targeted from the first day of Enver Hoxha's Communist regime, with Blloshmi's father being arrested in 1963. Blloshmi studied to be a teacher at the Normal School of Elbasan, where he graduated in 1966. His diploma proved worthless, however, as kulaks were not allowed to teach. Being barred from the workers’ cooperative, too, he had no choice but to do hard labor.
While on military service in the north of the country, he befriended a priest who helped teach him foreign languages and supplied him with banned books from abroad. In 1970, having finished his military service, he was granted entry into the cooperative. It was during these years as a guard in the isolated Albanian mountains, coated by the snow of winter, that he read and wrote thoughts criminally provocative to the regime. In 1976, he, too, was arrested. After a year of interrogation and torture, the Presidium of the People’s Assembly ruled on his fate. On the 17th of July 1977, Blloshmi was executed by firing squad alongside Genc Leka, a fellow poet from Librazhd.
The following poem describes a land isolated from the rest of Earth, empty of beauty. It is a poignant portrayal of Blloshmi’s reality and the omnipresent regime he resisted. In fact, part of the reason Blloshmi and Leka’s poetry was considered so objectionable was simply that it was “too sad,” an impossible sentiment in their socialist utopia.
The poem is invaluable both as a work of literature and as a piece of history, with the fate Blloshmi and Leka met serving as a harrowing memory of a system and a mode of thought which killed its poets; a memory which should never be forgotten.
Sahara, far lies Sahara,
Sahara of rock and sand and stone,
Whose only friend is its own name
Which cannot dream, or even picture a tree.
Sahara knows not how to dream.
She only grinds stones with her mind.
Sahara has no songs to sing,
Sahara has no tears to cry.
Sahara has no friend, no companion
Sahara has no daughters, no sons.
Sahara is but a plot of land,
It is said that she doesn’t even get along with night.
Night doesn’t like it in Sahara,
With nothing but stones down below;
Where there is no words nor love nor souls;
Her black veil having nothing to shroud.
Not a soul knows how
The cosmos wound up with this wound on its back
It is said that it was contrived
When mankind was in need of a curse.
When mankind speaks ill of her,
Sahara listens out and laughs.
Sahara begins to rejoice,
When we curse one another.
And when sunshine meekly descends
And gleams upon the mossed stones,
The sky resembles a veil,
And gleams upon the desolate desert.
Then, when in the strong and heated hatred
You begin to curse and shout,
From the shrubs emerges the drunken memory
And forthwith calls upon Sahara.
When the curse wanes and the memory
Wilts in the well of forgetfulness…
When the sun appears and the frosty winds fall silent,
Desolate the desert remains.
A memorial for the two poets in their native city of Librazhd.
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