Poetry is an invisible victory. The poet creates a whirl of words that follow one another naturally and freely without limits. The images of the writer haunt the minds of the reader and the poetry explodes like a volcano. In the first phase, it is quiet, and then it bursts and gets everything it can find on its way. The lava that comes out of it is boiling hot and the smoke marks the sky for a long time. The poetry of Mujo Bucpapaj is characterized by its simplicity and passes through the images of rivers, wind, rain, mountains and roads. His poetry is descriptive in details. It highlights historical facts but when it enters into depth it seems like it was a dream. The poetry of Mujo Bucpapaj wanders through dream and hope, through prayers and the desire to move forward. It appears in twilights and dusks, in the mud and grounds of people and the roads that direct you to the future.

His poetry appears among the living people and disappears among the dead ones. Some living people feel the pain of the time and they do not regret their experiences even though their pains become strong and they suffer. The poetry passes from imagery to imagery and it revives the thoughts, it makes you reflect and see through the eyes of the poet. He mentions the flames and then the light of the white snow, colourful images characterize his poetry. These images are silent reflections of the writer’s imagination. The portrait of God appears in the hands of humanity. Philosophy travels in the poetry of Mujo Bucpapaj. On one hand, the author writes about the roots of a tree that is burning. This tree gives light to the dark world and it is sacrificed for this enlightening. The author’s self-sacrifice to bring the light through poetry is invisible. His verses are like the light in the middle of the darkness. The poet remains in front of an enormous gate. He breathes in thoughts and he is one step nearer to the immortal world. He prays for the fate of the world and his prayers are made in silence. He feels free because there is an open window, a perspective, the sign of hope, the rainbow after a heavy rain.

The light is the main motif in Mujo Bucpapaj’s poetry. This light wanders from one poem to another. This light lightens one place and then ‘it goes in the city of the palms’, an Eldorado for the poet, a place without orientation, a place where the waves get together and the glorious olives cover the areas. The contrast between black and white prevails and the author makes use of an elevated and elite language that acquires specific knowledge to understand it. Mujo Bucpapaj’s poetry is philosophical, metaphoric and difficult to read. The author seems to express freely but what you can understand is a little bit of his thoughts. His poetry creates another reality within a reality and sometimes his reality goes beyond the reality.

Historical elements characterize Mujo Bucpapaj’s poetry (especially elements of the Albanian history). There are hidden symbols in his verses. He also highlights the nation’s symbols. The writer in one poem says, ‘Frozen children’s hands sway like flags on the windows of Dardania’. Poetry is important for the author himself. He expresses his own feelings and he transforms in a candle in order to give light to the sad minds of the people, to burn the ashes in cold historical nights, to dream torn dreams and find freedom in the middle of the mud. 

The author cannot forget the isolation (of dictatorship), his feelings during this period of time. He feels like he is the last soldier among those who gave their life for the democracy of Albania. He is triumphant and he creates the peaceful army of the world. The world for him is a happy Eldorado without isolation, without oppression, without darkness, without sufferings, without wind statues. The author selects the words. His metaphoric language is impressive. The words appear in their first meaning and they imply a second meaning. The poet meditates and under these circumstances the role of his words is indispensable. The words which have their own traditional meaning transform and get another shape. Not only his verses have their own meaning and value, the title of the book is a resumé of all the poems, The Invisible Victory.

Mujo Bucpapaj’s poetry can be compared to the cardiogram. It has visually the rhythm of the heart that goes from a slow rhythm to a fast one. It goes up and it goes down and it leaves its traces on paper and in the end, it becomes melancholic and touches the spirit of its readers. He writes free verses, his poetry is solid, and his poetry reflects a strong character and his thoughts are nostalgic. His memories are living and colourful memories. Everything is important for him, every object, every place and details.  He sees the world optimistically through colours. The black and white times are gone and now it is the time of life. He creates the idea of a paradise in the earth, a paradise that was missing in the dictatorship and isolation years of Albania. The author says, ‘There is only one place for those who plant tears and pain, for those who suppress the freedom and dreams’ and live in ‘dark colour times’.

The poetry of Mujo Bucpapaj requires more than one reading. The readers can only perceive different words in the first reading. They can understand the meaning of the verses in the second reading and enter into the depth of poetry in the third. Senseless sounds, dark images of war, frozen images are key aspects and his poetry is the evidence of the Albanian Dictatorship period. The author is plunged into the nature. He writes for the portrait of the wind and cold forests. Being focused on the nature, he writes for the pastoral life about the new waterfalls of life and love. The imagination of the author goes in his childhood and he intertwines his fantasy with the real life. He finds himself, he finds his freedom, he observes the spaces and he walks through difficult paths and overcomes the barriers. The poetry follows a specified itinerary. He starts with an invisible victory, passes in different silences, makes contrasts, thinks peacefully and he wants to show that this is just the beginning. The poet loves the words, the poet loves the verses and the poet loves the time. His time does not stop. His time is without time. The author walks in an infinite road, in the road of an invisible victory full of hope for the future and nostalgia of the past time. Poetry is his victory.

A selection of Mujo Bucpapaj’s poems:

 

Wandering in Darkness

 

No crowds on the deviated roads

On the other side

Of the window

 

We wander in the darkness

Of shrugging despair

Unwillingly

 

O voice flying to the sky

Over hoarsening trees

Is the hope of the quarter

Sheltering drowned calls

Of meaning

 

There was no step on the road

Of the lost principle

Of the uprising

We wander in the sacred darkness

Of the windows

Of the other side of anger

 

O man marching to recover

Freedom

Thurnderclap is over there in the city

 

 

Rain Isn’t Rain

 

What murmurs

When touching leaves

Isn’t rain at all

 

Rain is a different thing

It’s the sky’s tear

 

Pouring down

The way the tear of the eye flows

From human suffering and longing

 

The rain we ask from the sky

The rain we dream of

Isn’t rain at all

 

It’s a golden tear

Running from the sky

To reach our fields and homes

 

What touches ears of grain noisily

Driving birds away

Isn’t rain at all

 

 

The Image of the Field

 

A blazing bole

Lit

The world

In the field of the Balkan chaos

 

It was our bone

That the wind born from ruins

Had ground over the wounds

 

The past life of the Continent

Full of sky

Contrasts

The Death Empire

Full of wars

The map of the shadow’s pains

Thrown in the ditch

 

It was God’s portrait

That the savage man

Of the planet’s culture

Had drowned

 

If something should be corrected

Before the horrible disintegration

We have to address the roots

For the bole is dying away

 

 

The Square

 

Our dream

That freedom devoid of post-war spirit

Had torn apart still resting here

 

That smoke of sky scrapping trees

Flows from the civil city

Of uprising sufferings to rush in

Through the wind’s blazing windows

 

Here rests our dream

That forbidden freedom had collapsed

To enter our world

And caress those girls’ hands

Piercing the torturing air

Coming from

The sunset

Of insulting things

 

We’ll go to the ruins to unbury

FREEDOM

And feed on IT our papers written

Amidst mud

 

On the day we defeated fear

 

 

About the Writer

Olta Totoni is a lecturer of the English Language and a researcher at the University of Tirana, Albania. She studied British and American Studies at the Faculty of Foreign Languages. She is specialized in Intercultural Language and Communication. She has written many articles related to political science, literature and criticism related to British and American Studies. Her articles are published in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, the USA, Canada etc.