from Reader of the Ashes

Aco Šopov

Horrordeath

Here all things are born and die on their own.
A great stone. A scar. A mumbled, muted word.
Spring is its mother and stepmother, wicked and shrewd.
Ashes of the dream, dream of the ashes. Horrordeath.

Droughts drink it, black rains sift it,
days heap it with night, layer upon layer,
while down its hide the vertebrae stiffen
with ossified shadows of raw flesh and rage.

Here winds are whistling and dark ghosts wail,
here the first crime, sin, punishment, rebuke.
Here sleep human and beast in one lair,
and the little child takes her first stumbling step.

The bread on it grows from a root deep and bitter,
so it is dry and sweet and sears like a flame.
Song, should some weary hermit accost you,
accept him as your own: he burns the same.

O rose in the throat, snakeberry in the mouth,
wild itch of blood with itself contending;
O land of delectable, deadly poisons,
the blazing boulder rolls. Burning. Burning. Burning.

Here all things, on their own, are born and die.
A great stone. A scar. A mumbled, muted word.
Spring is its mother and stepmother, full of lies.
Ashes of the dream, dream of the ashes. Horrordeath.

 

Lament from the Other Side of Life

I climbed above the summit of the pain.
I am human. But what is a human?
Emptiness before me, emptiness behind me.
Emptiness that catches fire.

From the other side of life,
with strong knots crucified alive,
I climbed above the summit of the pain.
That day. Blackday. Up black stairs.

I climbed above the summit of the pain.
From the other side of life,
from the other side of myself,
of everything not spoken,
everything not burned away,
from the other side of the water,
from the other side of the wellspring,
from the other side of the root.

Dissolve, clump of clay, flow out, water,
overflow, cup of keening,
for all the cities of this city,
all the grievings of this grieving.
Tell me who to blame,
who to feel sorry for? Tell me!
O child who is no more—
my grieving, your embrace.

My grieving, your embrace,
your darkness, my netherworld.
O earth of keening, earth of desert,
from dead weeping grown,
earth, look around, earth, uncover yourself.

Take this eye,
take this wheat
in your withered hand.

Take me, earth, or bring me back,
bring me back below this summit,
below the other side of life,
return my human powers to me.
O earth, bring me back to earth.
I am human, meant as a human to suffer;
to find stone, to wall myself up alive
in an arch on some bridge.

 

If There Isn’t Enough Light for You

If there isn’t enough light for you,
take me.
That I may be night, a night that burns away
to bring you day.

And if there isn’t enough love for you,
take me.
I will dig out the pupils in the eyes of the night
that you mirror a star and shine.

If there isn’t enough hate for you,
even then, take me.
Hell is weaving beneath my heart
a hell for all eternity.

If there isn’t enough light for you,
take me.

But if there isn’t enough me for you,
what am I to you?
Except that I gaze at you endlessly,
except that I burn away.

 

August

Beneath the tree of night I lie, in August, which is dying and singing
in a flower of ash from the burned-out horror.
From my forehead, as if from black soil, a vine of stars is springing,
heavy with ripening, swelling clusters.

In the August night I lie, my head riveted to the earth.
Will they stop me, will they continue to hold me—
these tireless soldiers of seeds and herbs,
of grass and roots and ferns and foliage?

Lie here and wait. Be still. Be a stone.
So what if night drinks you and you’re lashed by the wind?
The fishermen in your eyes weave nets unseen:
in the depths of your waiting a golden fish dreams.

I lie here and know: it is August and everything’s changing.
The golden grapes like widened pupils lose their fire.
The dark sun of midnight proceeds to its zenith.
But I remain captive in grass, cemented to ferns.

translated from the Macedonian by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer