Dětství (Ismail Kadare)

Childhood My childhood - ink-stained fingers, Bells in the morning, The muezzin at dusk, Collections of cigar boxes and old stamps, Trading one Ceylon For two Luxembourg. Thus they passed, Childhood days, Chasing after a rag ball, raising dust and cries, A rag ball, Made of grey Albanian rags. (1958) [Fëminia, from the volume Shekulli im, Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1961, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 77]