Calendar Poem by Ndrek Gjini

Calendar

My grandmother had a true calendar,
a meaningful, eventful one.
“You were born four moons
after the heavy flooding
which killed half of the town,
twelve moons before
the communists dynamited the church.
It was just two moons after
the grapes were ripened, ”
she used to say to me.

As a child, until I began school,
I knew nothing of the fact
that I was born on October 1st 1963.

A heartless man it must have been
who invented the calendar,
a man without memory, I think.

The names of days, weeks, months, years
are meaningless things,
only signs. Nothing more.

If I tell you my birthday
with the current calendar,
I tell you nothing about myself.
But what if I use
my grandmother’s calendar?