And Yet Again Black Sun

Here everything lethally bears your likeness.
Even this tar scattered across the hills.
And this resin
seeping from the gorge of three dry rivers.
And the sorrow of the dog whimpering through the outer districts—
even this bears your likeness.

And this cliff the water is lapping against,
water that surrenders itself like a woman,
wanting the embrace
of that other who pays with his life for unbridled thirst.
And this blueness, stinting and unattainably close.
And this cliff above it, against which it laps.

And these vineyards and vines. And wines
poured from incandescence, from scorch, from heat.
And drought.
And this stone with a soul turned to chalk.
And these three, O black sun, our own three sons,
who thirst amid vineyards and vines and wines.

And this belltower in a thick hazel forest,
which is praying and cursing.
And echoing woundedness.
And everyone who comes here to be healed in peace.
And the gouged-out eyes in the ancient frescoes.
And this belltower in a thick hazel forest.

Here everything lethally bears your likeness.
Even this tar scattered across the hills.
And this resin.
And the starry Great Wagon above them.
And the dog whimpering all through the outer districts—
even he in his sorrow bears your likeness . . .

And this land, turbulent but clear.
And this drought. And heat.
And nightmare.
And my three wounds—three words never uttered.
O black sun, late autumn’s fire,
light trickles down on us from a long-burned-out star.

Aco Šopov, Reader of the Ashes (Гледач во пепелта), 1970
Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina Kramer, 2022