Also available in: Macedonian French

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.

Aco Šopov, Reader of the Ashes, 1970
Translated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau, The Long Coming of the Fire, Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2023.

The poem was also published in the journal Asymptote.

You lie there, since morning, sprawled on the ground, behind a stone just large enough to shelter your head; beside you, others lie, sprawled like you, no more protected than you, while grenades explode relentlessly all around, and above, enemy planes circle, flying very low, a hundred meters—no, it seems, fifty meters above you, and you see the tilted faces of the pilots, their triumphant smiles, their exultation; you see their hands taking several bombs and releasing them. The bombs fly through the air, they fall, it seems straight toward you; you close your eyes… explosion… someone beside you and someone far away screams; a cloud of dust and earth covers your face; something tears at your ears, shrieks, grinds, cuts into you…

And so it goes from morning until nightfall. Never so much, never so much in your life have you loved the night. Night descends slowly; slowly you straighten up, your stiffened body gradually adjusting to movement, and you see: your comrades are beside you, some making the same movements as you, others seeming to stare fixedly into the depths of the earth, or perhaps at this small handful of grass through which a few insects crawl.— Aco Šopov, The Column of the Sun", 1959 (excerpt)