Shadows Pass Us By 

We’ll meet one day,
like a paper boat and
a watermelon that’s been cooling in the river.
The anxiety of the world will
be with us. Our palms
will eclipse the sun and we’ll
approach each other holding lanterns.

One day, the wind won’t
change direction.
The birch will send away leaves
into our shoes on the doorstep.
The wolves will come after
our innocence.
The butterflies will leave
their dust on our cheeks.

An old woman will tell stories
about us in the waiting room every morning.
Even what I’m saying has
been said already: we’re waiting for the wind
like two flags on a border.

One day every shadow
                                    will pass us by.

— Translated from the Macedonian by Magdalena Horvat 

Fast Is The Century 

Fast is the century. If I were the wind
I would have peeled the bark off the trees
and the facades of the buildings on the outskirts.

If I were gold, I would have been hidden in cellars,
into crumbly earth and among broken toys,
I would have been forgotten by the fathers,
and their sons would remember me forever.

If I were a dog, I wouldn’t have been afraid of
refugees, if I were a moon
I wouldn’t have been scared of executions.

If I were a wall clock
I would have covered the cracks on the wall.

Fast is the century. We survive the weak earthquakes
watching towards the sky, yet not towards the ground.
We open the windows to let in the air
of the places we have never been.
Wars don’t exist,
since someone wounds our hearts every day.
Fast is the century.
Faster than the word.
If I were dead, everyone would have believed me
when I kept silent.

— Translated from the Macedonian by Peggy Reid and Graham W. Reid

Usual Summer Nightfall 

1.

This is what summer nightfall is like:
the adulteress comes onto the balcony
in a silk nightgown that lets through
the trembling of the stars,
a twig drops from the beak of a bird
that falls asleep before it has built its home,
a soldier lowers the flag of the state
with a letter from his mother in his pocket
and atomic tests in the womb of the earth
secretly revive the dead. At that moment someone
quietly interprets Byzantine neumes^[1],
someone else falsifies the exoduses
of the Balkan and the civil wars
in the name of universal truths.
In the factory yards
the statues of participants
in annulled revolutions sleep,
on the symmetrical graves
plastic flowers lose their color
and ordinary ones their shape,
but this peace of the dead
we have parted from
is not ours.

2.

In the village with three-lit windows
a fortune-teller foresees only
recoveries, and not illnesses.
The waves throw up bottles enough
to hold the whole sea,
the arrow on the one-way road sign
points to God,
a fisherman rips off a bit of the sky
as he casts his baited line into the river,
some poor child searches for the Little Bear
and the planet he’d like to come from,
in front of  the doorstep of the killer with an alibi
a feather attempts to fly.
This is what usual summer nightfall is like.
The town combusts in the redness of the moon
and the fire brigade ladders seem
to lead to heaven, even then when
everyone
               is climbing
                                down
                                          them.

— Translated from the Macedonian by Peggy Reid and Graham W. Reid

Perfection Is Born 

I want someone to tell me
about the messages in the water in our bodies,
about yesterday’s air
in telephone booths,
about flights postponed because of
poor visibility, despite
all the invisible angels.

The fan that weeps for tropical winds,
the incense that smells best
as it vanishes—I want someone to tell me about these things.

I believe that when perfection is born
all forms and truths
crack like eggshells.

Only the sigh of gentle partings
can tear a cobweb apart
and the perfection of imagined lands
can postpone the secret
migration of souls.

And what can I do with my imperfect body:
I go and I return, go and return
like a plastic sandal on the waves
by the shore.

— Translated from the Macedonian by Peggy Reid and Graham W. Reid

Silence 

There is no silence in the world.
Monks have created it
to hear the horses every day
and feathers falling from wings.

— Translated from the Macedonian by Peggy Reid and Graham W. Reid

I Saw Dreams 

I saw dreams that no one remembers
and people wailing at the wrong graves.
I saw embraces in a falling airplane
and streets with open arteries.
I saw volcanoes asleep longer than
the roots of the family tree
and a child who’s not afraid of the rain.
Only it was me no one saw,
only it was me no one saw.

— Translated from the Macedonian by Peggy Reid and Graham W. Reid

Notes: 

[1]Basic elements of Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation.

Also, read four poems by Malayalam poet Rafeeq Ahamed, translated into English by K.M. Ajir Kutty, and published in The Antonym: 

Tear Curtains & Other Poems— Rafeeq Ahamed

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