{"id":102251,"date":"2022-11-29T00:32:05","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T23:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/reading-room\/poetry-shelf\/la-longue-venue-du-feu\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T18:47:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T17:47:30","slug":"the-long-coming-of-the-fire","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/reading-room\/poetry-shelf\/the-long-coming-of-the-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Coming of the Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tThe Long Coming of the Fire\t<\/h1>\n\t

1.<\/p>\nThe fire is here, beneath these mad waters,
\nbeneath this limestone and self-sowing evil.\nBeneath these waters heavy and ripened
\nthree black boundaries blackly divide them.\nBeneath this wreath from sunheads wrought,
\nbeneath this wave choking on rocks.\nBeneath this thunder, sworn oaths and malice,
\nand this tree on the bank with its age-old menace.\nThe fire is here, underneath this hide,
\nbeneath these three boundaries, these three knives.\nAlways and everywhere all-powerful and weary,
\na star in the heart, and in the root, darkness.\nDig,
\ndig it up.\n\t

2.<\/p>\nFrom headspring to delta,
\nfrom fist to cross.\nFrom underground to frozen ground,
\nfrom brother to brute.\nFrom glow to gallows,
\nfrom word to sword.\nDig,
\ndig it up.\n\t

3.<\/p>\nHere you will never dig it up.
\nSee how it’s fused to the ancient beech tree. \nIt rocks in a cradle between three trees.
\nIn every poppy a red wind blows.\nIt’s the warrior in an icon in an old church.
\nIt’s a long-vanished speech in search of itself.\nSee how it kneels like a beggar enraptured
\nas it gouges its word in the carving for an altar.\nDig into yourself, beneath your own hide,
\nbeneath the three scars, beneath the three knives.\n\t

4.<\/p>\nDig,
\ndig it up.\nFrom villages to cinders,
\nfrom breast to bone.\nFrom god to hawthorn,
\nfrom harvest to curse.\nFrom mark to lament,
\nfrom scabbard to revolt.\nDig,
\ndig it up.\n\t

5.<\/p>\nNever will you dig it up, not with wild thieving.
\nThe dead are not dead and the living not living.\nFor them the cross was light, but not light the ashes.
\nThe dead will only die the day their song passes.\nFor the dead who lie there, the grave is not heavy.
\nBut the songs that they sing weigh hard on the living.\nHere, long though you live, you won’t dig up the fire.
\nIt is that saint who bursts from the icon.\nIt is that stone where the dead make their pillow,
\nthat starry feast, that health and that illness.\nIt is that magic, that wonder-working blood,
\nwhich repairs your wounds and severs your head.\nDig beneath your scars, beneath the knife that serves you;
\nin your eyes the fire blazes with the roses’ insurgence. \n\t

6.<\/p>\nDig,
\ndig it up.\nThe rivers will utter their final vow
\nand then run dry and cease to flow.\nThe heavens will come crashing down.
\nThe mountains will tumble. Deserts will reign.\nStars will mix with beasts, toxins with tillage,
\nand none will know who is dead and who is living.\nDig,
\ndig it up.\n\t

7.<\/p>\nAs you dig beneath you, it will appear above you
\nand place a death’s head upon your shoulder.\nThe fire will carry you blinded through secret realms,
\nand where or who or what you are, you will not ask yourself.\nIt is here, in this root, in this silence which shines,
\nand yet its own light it never will sense.\nIt hangs with every dead body on every tree.
\nThis is us, this is you, this is me.\nAnd if it seems in such form like a voice fading out,
\nit will call to you again from a distant height.\n\t

8.<\/p>\nDig into yourself, beneath your own hide,
\nbeneath the black sun of the three knives.\nThe fire is here, beneath these waters gone mad,
\nin this hungry womb which bears a hungry word.\nBut it also can tame the wild beast in his den,
\nit can rend and crush and kill and join.\nWith it beauty is added to the beauty of the flower;
\nwithout it the world is an entire world poorer.\nFor us the cross is light, but the ashes-no light thing.
\nThe dead will die with us and with the song we sing.\n\tAco \u0160opov<\/a>,\u00a0Reader of the Ashes<\/em><\/a>, 1970
\nTranslated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau,\u00a0The Long Coming of the Fire<\/em><\/a>, Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2023.\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"The\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Long Coming of the Fire – manuscript p. 1\n\t

Listen to the poem in Macedonian<\/p>\n\t\t