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Macedonian PEN Centre: Publications |
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Translated by Graham W. Reid
JOURNEY OF THE FLOWERLET-BLADE OF GRASS
Before alighting on the white unstarched
sheets of bygone images
the flowerlet-blade of grass, forsaken, spent her days
between the pages of Auden's bucolics.
It is simple to grasp how she landed there!
Thousands of possibilities come to mind:
an ant may have dragged her painstakingly there
from the forgetfulness of children waking.
Or maybe she sprouted from everyday slumber,
or slipped through a crack in the floor
reiterating ascension in reverse.
No, she swam the salmon's fatal upriver course.
Gutenberg pressed you twixt lakes and rivers
yet you survived, your fingers red and raw with cold.
You kept your body back for a secret encounter
not letting Linnaeus rechristen you.
I know you waited to fall on the breast
of him who gave you soul and meaning,
longing to sleep infantlike, to hunger in your dreams
and hear the wine seething in your heart.
And you won the day! Teleology is firm as oak!
The flowerlet-blade of grass beckons breastward for kisses:
eroticism and ecology fuse into one.
Twenty years on Sunflower still brings nostalgic bliss.
And if you chance to spy the flowerlet-blade of grass
hiding twixt the teeth of your old comb
beyond a doubt your hair was her nightclub
with but a single guest-Dionysus his name.
Conceal your reeling lest the mirror recall
you slew Dionysus last night in your cups,
let the flowerlet-blade of grass bloom in the dark as well,
melancholically reminding us of Sturm und Drang.
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CATALONIA AND THE SANCTITY OF THE FAMILY
I
Only the sanctity
Of the family
Frightens me now.
Saintly looks
Pursue me everywhere.
They smile upon me:
From the upraised hands,
From the clothing
In the centre of the circle,
From the feet
That follow old rules.
Everything counsels me
Over-zealously:
"Do not seek her here,
Your flowerlet, your blade of grass -
The sanctity of the family
Dances in the sardana's pipe."
II
Only the sanctity
Of the family
Frightens me now.
Saintly looks
Pursue me everywhere.
They pity me:
The multicoloured ridges,
The emptiness
At the heart
Of the incomplete cathedral,
Gaudi's ghost,
The warm marble
Sawn from fairytales.
Everything around me
Perfectly forbodes:
"She is not with you here,
Your flowerlet, your blade of grass -
The sanctity of the family
Is sown by the Sagrada Familia."
III
Only the sanctity
Of the family
Frightens me now.
Saintly looks
Pursue me everywhere.
Compassion crawls over me:
From the upraised crucifixes,
From the Black Virgin
Who for centuries
Has married young souls,
From the tranquillity
Of the Catalonian shrine.
Everything is turned
Against me.
A saintly voice visits me:
"Don't you dare
To think here
Of your flowerlet, your blade of grass -
The sanctity of the family
Is dawning at Montserrat."
IV
Only the sanctity
Of the family
Frightens me now.
Yet nowhere do
Saintly looks pursue me.
Love overflows
From the upraised mast
On whose tip
Gala's boat
Sails tranquilly,
From Sinbads's
Scattered eggs
Laid on the house
Of lonely Salvador.
The straw of salvation
Offers itself to me:
"Only here
Can we be together,
My flowerlet, my blade of grass -
The sanctity of the family
Is falling apart in Figueras."
V
Only the sanctity
Of being in love
Satisfies me now.
No one pursues me
As I stroll in the Ramblas
And everything recalls to me
My flowerlet-herb.
Could I but
Banish from my thoughts
That final fear:
"Yet what if love
and the family are of one flesh?"
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THE PASSIONATE TRAVELLING SUBJECT
Having decided to go somewhere
I contemplate the choice
of the best means of transport,
and inevitably fall into aporias…
Trains remind me too much
of an obsolete textile plant,
and railway lines cripple me,
deprive me of digression and sideways movement.
Semantically I disdain automobiles,
maybe because I do not like wrestling
Greek-Roman style, and hence loathe
the linguistic-sports melange: a u t o s -mobilis.
Aeroplanes do not attract me as
I am well -versed in Greek Mythology,
Though I have always regarded
Icarus's feat with due respect.
To travel the world on foot
is rather nostalgic and sad,
that way you cannot go far away -
beyond the first blisters.
Probably because of all this
my favourite means of transport
is you, my growing love:
I am calm when I travel to you,
When I cover distances lying by you,
When I move freely over you,
when I land safely on you,
and passionately set off with your body round the world.
Translated by Graham W. Reid, Filip Korzenski
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NEWSPAPERS REPORT
I
There were no unpropitious predictions
In the old and famed Chinese horoscope:
This year was supposed to be harmonious,
Calm and fruitful, a true year of the snake.
Not an inkling of unrest, imperial clashes
Or brutal fights between adversaries.
Not at the time when the linden were in bloom,
And certainly not on the square of Heavenly Peace.
Even K'ung Fu-tzu, twenty-six centuries earlier,
While revising the Classic of Poetry (Shih Ching)
Could not have foreseen the horrible carnage
Which was to take place in the future.
How can we otherwise interpret his verses
In the poem of the Tired Soldier ?
"I would like to lie down and under a tree and rest,
and no longer be an imperial soldier ."
II
"If we know the general principles
Of the movement of the stars,
If we can predicted the eclipses
Of the moon and the sun,
If we can make a list of all stars
And ascertain the effect
Of their influence
On Allah's most beloved sons,
Then we can determine with certainty
The time of the union with Allah."
These were some of the thoughts,
In the year 823 since Mohammed's journey to Medina,
Preoccupying Sultan Ulugh Beg Mirza,
The grandson of the great Timur,
While watching the builders erect
The Walls of the celestial observatory,
That farsighted eye of Samarkand.
The powerful instruments did not help Ulugh Beg,
Useless were his astrolabes and altazimuths,
Unavailing was the quadrant larger than the dome
Of St Sophia in Constantinople;
He failed to see the time of his own union.
Besides, he was unable to mark the end
Of the month of Sheval of the Allah's year 1409
(regarded as 1989 by the infidels)
As the time anticipated for the union,
For the ascent to paradise of an equally power figure,
Not the Sultan but Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini.
Imperfect are the results of Islamic astronomy
As far as the prediction of death is concerned;
But for the consolation of infidels,
Neither did the perilous Satanic Verses
Of Salman Rushdie envision or foresee this grief!
III
Soviet party documents
Strictly sanction
Responsibility for failing
To carry out set assignments.
But who among the party members
Could have supposed that there
Was such a defect in the construction
(Or maintenance) of the Ural
Gas Pipeline, and that the gas
There freely leaked and spread,
Indifferent to mischievous trains
Full of children and young people
With inauspiciously tied destinies.
Who could have imagined
That the powerful Soviet trains
Would wish to exalt to heaven
The souls of the dearest.
Hence it should not be surprising
Why Blaise Cendrars did not write of
The marriage of trains and natural gas
In his 'Prose of the Trans-Siberian
And of Little Jehanne of France'!
IV
And no one could have ever supposed,
Even their closest, those who knew them,
That on this very day, far from home,
Cut off from all world events,
Two bodies and two souls would cry and laugh,
Believing that they could do everything,
Knowing that everything would be as it is,
Feeling that something unearthly unfolded,
And would only learn the following day
From the newspapers that their restlessness
Had a significant effect on peace in the world!
Translated by Filip Korzenski
Ivan Džeparovski (b.1958, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia) is an essayist, poet and translator. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. He is an author of several books in the field of aesthetics for which he was awarded the "Mlad Borec Prize" and "Dimitar Mitrev Prize". He works at the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje as a lecturer in "Aesthetics" and "Philosophy of Culture".
Essays: Argo Sails Down the Axios, 1984; In Search of Lost Totality, 1993; The Work of Art, 1998.
Poetry books: Pictures at an Exhibition, 1989; Eclogues, 1992; Poems, 1998.He also translates (W.Blake, Y.Brodsky, J.Joyce). He was granted the "Grigor Prlicev Award" for a poetic rendition.
Memberships: Macedonian Writers' Association, Macedonian Philosophic Society, Macedonian P.E.N. Centre.
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