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A Toast
I raise this glass to you, my friends—
may each of you have the thing you want;
best of luck, I say to them,
and see myself raise an empty hand.
Aco Šopov, The Wind Carries Beautiful Weather, 1957
Translated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau, The Long Coming of the Fire, Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2023.
I raise this glass to you—
to everyone, to whatever you want,
to you, to good luck, I tell them,
but—well—my hand is empty.
Translated by Milne Holton and Lena Ognenova in Reading the Ashes, An Anthology of the Poetry of Modern Macedonia, 1977.