TRANSLATED FROM THE SLOVAKIAN BY Zuzana Habek, Martina Grmanová, Martin Železník

Image Used For Representation

BODY / FAMILY / CONTEXT

because at grandfather’s / vast taiga / hunting
man-eating beasts / everything went
through the hallway of his house

stationary jay / squirrel / crow
deer head / on furniture exposed muskrat
weasel and otter / tufts of fur / glass
gaze / anxiety

another time when playing in the closet / rabbit
and fox furs under our feet / in the corner
of the attic scattered roe deer skulls / antlers

because at grandfather’s / they confronted us
with life since we were little / in their own
strange way

LINEAGE / LICHEN / MONOCULTURE

my father’s workbook: in October
we descend into the valleys / we travel
through the shallows swamps marshes and soaked
meadows / through their home names / we recognize
local dialect / only language
subdues this region enough / we say
that we speak in our own way / we accumulate words
lose them and something intensifies in us

forests spruces monocultures / we
in their oxygen texts / contexts / water cycle
tied us to the country / us writers
translators of the north / lichens / sandstones
and our birth houses have stood out / since forever
from the earth / which eats its own poets

LINEAGE / BODIES / CONTEXTS

our ancestors: horse smugglers / foresters / millers
gramps in a northern wasteland / bear hunters
bearded cranberries’ and mushrooms‘ gatherers

progenitresses with wooden combs / for generations
mothers with thick arms
(potatoes beans open pots) eleven children / tin
bathtubs at the courtyards

spacious bed sheets / tablecloths:
meadows woods and river-beds
hardening arteries / home births / pies
that have never been sweet

RITUALS: LAYING DOWN

in the spring / in the mountains the slopes collapsed
and Marika and I / then eleven years old
we laid down into the gaps in the soil / ground beetles
ants earthworms spiders snakes lizards
they got out from our heads back to earth

we can be heard even if we are silent
Marika said afterwards / and all hollows
times / grammatical forms
they are heading inwards since

REPOSITORIES / EDGES OF HUMAN

we from ancient families / we stand in the snow fields
and there are in us / internal azimuths / instinct / collective memory

an area with an epic bedrock / tundra / heart
that is vast / feels our warmth with all its stone

because the land / it’s not just the surface / the big sink
cold soup / sends a badger to our camera trap
wolf cubs / their quivering tongue over the water shell

we from ancient families and white paper
of our native tundra / we only read animal tracks
heavy air matter above us / jelly-like membrane
eye / mute but observes / repositories: edges of human
we are included in paratext / bearing the burden
of this understanding

Also, read Above The Bell and Other Poems by Ivan Djeparoski, translated from the Macedonian by Zoran Anchevski and published in The Antonym:

Above The Bell and Other Poems— Ivan Djeparoski

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